My 8 Mth DD wont eat... help?

[MammyShirl]

After months of trying to wean my dd off the breast onto formula and onto food am have way there. My breast milk is slowly drying up now an dvery second week I drop another feed. Problem is my DD has only really been eating solids for a month. I tried from 5 1/2 months but she was not interested, hv said she as satisfied on my breast milk. AAAAAAnyay, I have sepnt hours in the kitchen boiling, pureeing, freezing differnent veggies. She hardly eats anything I make so I gave in and bought commercial foods, she loves all fruit purees and has her mouth open when she sees the tubs but anything else her mouth is clamped shut - she actually knows the food by packaging!!! so i have tried hiding the packageing - no luck! she will sometimes eat plain vegtabbles pureed for 4 month olds, i need to make her eat more variet of flavours and texture. i have tried her with lumpier food but she spits it out. she wont have veggeis with meat purees either. not sure what to do as she cant carry on eating 4 mth old purees. she has one tooth soi give her toast every morning, she sucks it and lovelys making a mess with it, she likes big carrots to chew and peeled appples. any ideas on how to push her along please? i am worried that she is notagetting all the vitamins she needs from my bit of breast milk, formula milk, fruit purees an dher breakfast - ready brek.

hello - anyone there, need some advice whilst onmy lunch brea... im bored! i want to be at home with my babbie!!!

Hi Mammyshirl. My ds (now 19 months) did exactly the same thing and I got v stressed also. There is nothing you can do other than keep offering her diffent food and different textures. She is still very young and it is all new to her. She won't starve herself and she'll do it when she's ready. RElax and it will come. HTH.

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The fact that she likes fruit purees suggests she likes sweet things.

When dd was this age, her favourite (apart from fruit) was my special home-made sweet veg concoction: carrots, peas, parsnips (if they were available), pumpkin and any other veg like that. As time went on I gradually added non-sweet veg to the mix (starting with brocolli) and tiny tiny amounts of meat. Could that kind of gradual approach work for you?

I did do this from the start really (after a few false starts with cauliflower and green beans), so can't vouch for it 100% but I think it's worth a try!

Also though, as long as your dd is eating a wide variety of fruit, I'm not sure she'll be lacking in vitamins. The only thing that might be a little low is iron but you'll have to look up which fruits contain iron!

stressyhead - yum, banana and mash!

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stressyhead - thats disgusting!!! did you really eat that? the only weird thing i ate whilst pregnant was choclate digestives and i stuck a few chrry tomatoes in my mouth at the same time... uuggh, ima making myselg feel sick now!

ill try my dd with some mash and bananna then. also i give her hot toast with butter when can i add marmite etc and cani give her butted wholemeal bread not toasted?

this site is so handy, i get more USEFUL info then i do from my doctor and hv

x

Toast and bread are exactly the same thing. Make honey sandwiches or cream cheese ones. My ds loved Petit Filous at that age. Don't worry about vitamins etc - you are giving her formula and if you are really bothered give her baby vitamin syrup. She seems to be doing really well from what you posted.

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thanks aloha
It was more my partner worried than me as physically she looks fine and her weight goes up steady on her weight chart she has always been bang on one line above average. i know you shoul dnot compare babies but wheni am with all the other mums, their babies are are all at least 2 months younger than my dd and they are all eating about 3 times more than my dd but she is not skinny... strange she seems to be getting enough out of the small amount she consumes. i am going to try chill out about it now, there have been a few tears and so much wasted food. because i dropped breast feeds my periods kicked in last week and i felt so tearful and emotional so it all got too much for me... fely sorry for myself. i forgot all about crappy periods, cant complain really though - not had one forover a year and half. i hope she will soon enjoy her food, i just want to be a good mammy and i want my little girl to be healthy and strong, i never thought that this little baby would decide what she likes and dislikes so early... whats she going to be like at 16?!?! please mammies stay around, ive got the feeling ill be asking questions for a long time!

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When ds went through his won't eat a thing stage at about the same age (and he'd been on solids since 17 weeks, fussy little b) someone told me a line which I repeated to myself whenever it got me down "if he's still only eating mashed banana when he's 14 ..."

Mind you, some days I did just sit and scream with him, it got me down so much

He eats anything now (if at nursery)!

Sorry, yes I know the advice is no honey before age one. I did earlier but I'm a very bad mummy. And ds is a honey addict at age 2 and I even have to make up songs about honey as he is so crazy about it. Have a bit of jam or Dairylea instead.

My Aunt runs a nursery and she puts her own veggies into the babies carton/jar of choice and they eat it just fine. Have you tried serving the food at different temperatures? my ds likes his food straight from the fridge or freshly cooked and just cool enough to pass the heat sensing spoon test. Fortunately these are the two temperatures his food is likely to be. Personally I hate just warm food myself, especially as that's all you tend to get once you have children.

I still give my 11mo and my 3yo some of the 4m fruit puree jars because they love them. I don't think it matters! As long as they're eating fingerfood then they'll be gettingused to lumps.

My 3yo went on food strike at 8m and I went ape with anxiety. He wasn't putting on weight but was still growing taller...soooo skinny! I did just about anything to get him to eat (good) food. And you know what? I shouldn't have bothered - he was teething and iggerant unobservant me didn't realise! As soon as the teeth came through he was happy to eat and piled the weight back on to where he would have been had he not gone on strike. All I did was give him my anxiety about his food, and put him off eating his favourite foods, eg yoghurt, because I mixed them with things I wanted him to eat but he didn't want.

When I compare the way my two eat (and I kept weaning diaries for both, so it's facts not memory) I can see that ds has always had a very small appetite: at the same stage of weaning he would eat 5-6 tsp for a meal very happily and be quite satisfied, whereas dd would eat 2-3 times as much. She still eats 2-3 times as much as him and she's not fat and he's not skinny!

boyandgirl - your reply is very interesting as my dd is teething right now, she has one tooth showing on her bottom left and one next to it just peeping out, maybe thats the reason she is not into food and why she likes pureed fruit straight from the fridge... cooling i guess. once babies start teething, is there times between where all the pain stops for a week or so or does it carry on until the whole set is out?

by the way - apricots have iron in (sorry not longer going to bed!)

The ususal answer, I'm afraid - it varies from child to child. My ds used to teeth for ages and ages with nothing appearing. He would dribble so much that he'd get constipated from dehydration, and his cheeks got so red and hot that they chapped. Yet that bit of teething rarely seemed to bother him. Only just before the teeth actually cut the gum, and while they were cutting, would he seem out-of-sorts. Dd dribbles constantly, whether teeething or not, and rarely gets flushed from teething, but she too is out-of-sorts only before and during the gum-cutting bit. They both cut teeth in groups, 2-4 at a time appearing over 2-3 weeks, and between times were fine, no matter how 'teethingy' they looked.

With a little experience you'll find you recognise your dd's particular 'miserable-teething' cues. Once I recognised them I would give my two Nelsons Teetha, which seemed to help but only if I gave it strictly according to instructions, without forgettting any doses.

It eases, really reaaly truly .