I've only just realised how stupid i've been

[lovelymama]

I thought I was ok when it came to nutrition but obviously not. I must have had my head in the clouds for the last 9 months....

DS 2.2 loves milk. I mean loves it. He drinks nearly 2 pints a day. He's an ok eater but doesn't have a lot of variety and tends to only really want 1 full meal a day with very small breakfast at least 2 hours after he gets up and a snack lunch. I've only just thought that this is probably because he is full of milk. His poos are also really loose and quite pale which i'm guessing is also related to the OD on milk.

Over the last 2 days I've really cut back on his milk (this is very hard as he screams and screams for more milk when his beaker is empty) and I'm trying to get him to eat more food instead. This is proving hard as he's completely distracted at meal times and never wants to sit down to eat. I'm having to feed him to encourage him to eat, although he is more than capable of feeding himself.

Anyone got any tips on how to get him more in to food and to focus less on milk?

By the way, DS was 9lb 10oz born and is quite lump still even though he doesn't eat much ( I don't give him many snacks between meals - maybe just a bit of fruit if we're out and about)

DS (3) was a very fussy eater until recently, but loves milk & would drink it all day if I let him.
Would it help if I said don't get too stressed? I'm sorry I know it's hard but toddlers are designed to do this.
DS slowly started eating food...rice and chilli to start, then potatoes, then pasta and sauce, then red pepper when I let him help me wash the salad.

Can you give him water instead? Does he eat plenty of fruit?

Mine was the same,I used to water her milk down as much as I could get away with.

But dont sweat it too much, it will pass. Try to get him involved in food prep-growing our own toms was a breakthrough with my DD, she used to pick them and I would then make tarts/pastry fingers with ready rollpuff pastry-dollops of mozerella chopped toms and basil. She loved them and it was dead dead easy.

I'd convert some of his milk drinks to water or diluted squash. He still needs fluids and water and squash aren't 'food'. Some kind of high-chair-style harness attached to a chair might keep him in position long enough to eat something. It's hard work to train a toddler to sit at a table so all you can do is persevere and not cave... Good luck

I had the same problem with my DS1, who breastfed AND drank up to 2 pints or so until he was around 2.5 or so. He first dropped the 2 pints, then gradually the bf, and then decided he was going to drop his nappies at night and has been dry since.

Looking back, he quite clearly associated milk and nappies with babyish things and now rarely asks for milk as a drink.

I didn't do anything at the time to tackle it as my DS2 was born around the same time and didn't want to insist on too many changes, but I think it was actually the right approach for us.