One year old not eating

[RedPandaFluff]

I'm at my wits end with one year old DD. In the last few weeks she's become increasingly reluctant to swallow any food at mealtimes. I've tried everything from withholding snacks to make sure she's really hungry for her next meal, to letting her try different cutlery, using her hands to eat, feeding her from my plate, literally everything. Every recipe from weaning books to ones friends have recommended, every texture, every taste, but it just feels like she doesn't want to swallow food.

I've just had yet another dinner time of smiling and encouraging and cajoling, pretending it's my food and giving her a bit etc. It's exhausting and what I really want to do is hurl the plates against the wall - and I might as well because she spits it all out or throws it on the floor anyway.

Her weight has plateaued and she's on the smaller side. She's started gulping down her bottles first thing in the morning and last thing at night so she's obviously hungry; I don't want to increase the milk I'm giving her as it feels like a backwards step.

Surely a one year old should be chewing and swallowing now? She's got plenty of teeth; but purées and lumps come straight back out, finger foods get chewed but come back out eventually too.

She had undiagnosed tongue tie as a baby and I'm just exhausted. It feels like feeding has always been, and will always be, a total nightmare.

My daughter has been an absolute nightmare with food. She's 3.5 now and I'm only just starting to think she's eating properly now, my advice would be (and I TOTALLY get that it's easier said than done) is to just chill out about it. No games etc just put it in front of her and you eat at the same time etc. If she's still having milk she will be fine. My HV was less than useless basically just said give them what they want to eat - bet she doesn't spit out chocolate. Obviously I didn't go down that route but I was a bit more lenient with treats than I should be really. But we're getting there - good luck

So that's the thing, @kshaw - she does seem to have a very strong preference for sweet things. She managed to eat quite a bit of the birthday cake we gave her as a treat on her birthday! I've noticed that we are definitely more successful when we do give her sweeter things - yoghurts etc. But that stresses me out because she's not eating any of the fresh veg or proteins we give her. She'll suck on pieces of fruit but even that doesn't get swallowed.

I think I better speak to our health visitor - however, she's been worse than useless so far

I only really stopped stressing that much over lockdown. Just didn't need it and it seems to have done the trick. It's awful I've been there. Does she like fruit? I know it's sweet but it's somewhere to start. I remember saying to HV that the sheer volume of food isn't adding up to 200calories how is she sustaining herself and the HV was saying she's still on same percentile so it doesn't matter! Maybe you have a more useful one though.