DS (2.9) eats like a bird - anyone else been there and come out the other side

[MrsWB]

My DS eats hardly anything compared to his friends. Often his entire food intake for the day would comfortably fit on one of his child plates. He is fairly fussy though not to extremes - think it is just normal toddler fussiness. He just has very little appetite and is always more interested in everything else than food.

He is just below the 2nd centile and generally happy and energetic and (usually) sleeps well, so I know he is ok in himself, it would just be nice to see him eat a bit more than survival rations.

Am not really looking for a magical solution (we have tried lots of things like cooking and eating together, and bribery etc, without much success) but am interested to know if anyone had the same situation and found it improved by itself with age?

We went through this nearly all of last year - DS has just turned 3 now so it was for most of his second year - he hardly ate a thing and like your DS was interested in anything but food and had very little appetite - he even went down through the centiles quite a bit and only put on about 500g in 8 months - I was beginning to get a bit worried even though he was happy, energetic and sleeping well. I spoke to our doctor about it as he sees DS as he has asthma so has a bit of a check when winter comes and he said he was fine.

It all changed a couple of weeks before Christmas when he just suddenly started eating huge portions again - he is now eating 3 full meals a day plus snacks - easily more in each single meal that he ate in a full day last year! He is also having a huge growth spurt so probably responsible for the renewed interest in food.

There was nothing that changed outwardly - he wasn't unhappy or anything and there was nothing particularly wrong with him last year which could explain the lack of appetite and refusal to eat I am guessing now it was just a phase.

Hopefully the same with your DS - but if you are worried you should maybe just have your HV or Dr just give him a once over?

HTH

Oh we have been there with DD1. She only ever drank an ounce of milk every 3 hours as a baby, dropped off the centile chart at times but the HV said as she was energetic and quite happy there was no problem..
Once we started weaning her she wouldn't touch all the homemade food i slaved over so resorted to jars. She would only eat a couple of spoonfuls each meal time. It was very stressful. Thankfully the jar stage didn't last long and she was eating homemade stuff but again not much of it.

Now she is nearly 4 and she clears her plate most meal times. She occasionally goes through phases where she hardly eats anything at each meal (she is doing this at the moment) but soon goes back to eating all her meals. Its such a worry and vey frustrating but i think they do grow out of it.

I have just had DD2 and at 3 weeks old she is polishing off 4oz bottles every 3 hours [grrin] im hoping this means she wont be like DD1 was!!

Hope your DS grows out of this very soon.