Help! Skinny independant 8mth old refusing spoon, what can I give her and will she get enough?

[magic123]

Since my 8 mth old has started at nursery 3days a week, she has had one after another stomach bugs and colds resulting in her eating hardly at all and being really skinny. Here apetite and weight gain is terrible anyway. She is breast fed but wont touch a bottle at nursery. She loves finger foods, toast, veg and fruit but has started refusing the spoon. Freaks out when I come anywhere near her. She has even worked out a way of eating them with out allowing me access with my sneaky spoonfull. I have got her a vacumn bowl but she just chucks it all on the floor. Does any one have any recipies and ideas to make sure she has enough? She has started waking for a feed in the night again after months of sleeping through so is obviously hungry. She has no teeth yet either so finds banannas etc to hard to chew properly. I really dont know where to go from hear with the weaning so help needed before baby starves!

Very tierd and frustrated and feeling like a bit of a failure with a fridge full of lovely organic purees mum.

Poor you
Have they said she is eating anything at nursery?
If she likes finger food then I would just let her make a piggy mess with the purees on toast etc - let her do it herself cos she will if she is hungry.
Also, a friend of mine used to let her little ones hold a spoon themselves so they felt independent, while she slipped a proper spoonful in.
Hope that helps, and I'm sure she will get her appetite back with avengeance once she has got over all the bugs and is a bit more settled into the nursery routine... don't let it get you down!!

Some suggestions...
Have you tried letting her hold a spoon - I always worked on one for me, one for her and one for the floor!
Or
Don't bother with a bowl, just put it all on her high chair tray and let her feed herself - pasta shells, fruit and veg, scrambled egg/ommelet, chopped chicken - if she likes feeding herself and can cope with toast, there should be enough other things you could give that will give her enough nutritonally.
Neither of mine would touch a bottle when breastfed which can be a bit tricky.
I'm sure you'll get better advice than this but it's all I can come up with at the moment

Whoops, Tickle got in first with the same advice - my typing's too slow!!!

I've got a similar thread going about how to get more calories into an 8-month old here .

My dd2 has no teeth either yet, but that shouldn't stop them processing hard food quite well with their gums. Mine will eat toast fingers with pnut butter, biscuits of any type, and some savoury finger thing made by Cow & Gate that I impulse-bought at the chemist and haven't been able to find since.

She also loves dried fruit, such as mango (v. expensive, though). Not sure how much goes down, but she seems to have a good time with it.

Have you tried giving her milk in a spouted cup? I use the old-fashioned spilly ones rather than the ones with fancy valves as they're incredibly hard to drink from (even for adults!).

Must be good advice then Bobs, so lets hope it helps magic

Ahh - thankyou yes I have read that one and started putting olive oil in the meagre amount of food I manage to get down her. I think I put too much in it tonight tho as she gagged and that was it - diner over!! I have tried milk in every type of cup but she never takes more than a couple of ounces - but then I guess its because she doesnt need to as I am feeding her at night.

Thanks for the advice - will try the pasta etc. I'm hopeing she will sort it out when she can feed her self and its just a difficult transition phase!

Magic, we had exactly the same issue but the phase did pass, thankfully - my HV suggested upping the calories with butter etc in things - just as you are doing with olive oil really - and as per the advice above, letting DS have his own spoon seemed to help as did serving up finger food - cheese on toast, pasta with stuff (pasta shells seemed to hold more of the sauce, we found!), fish goujon finger things etc. He eats fine now, tho is still skinny!

I let bob hold a spoon in each hand, which kept him plenty busy while I put my spoon in. I also let him have a go himself for 5 minutes and then helped him to finish (not that he had started). He still refuses food from dh who won't put the bowl down on the table because of the mess (no mess, and no eating either). We have found he eats miles more if we are eating at the same time and talking to each other (ie, not paying him any attention).

my dd was just like this with the refusing the spoon. Flax seed might help your dd immune system with all the colds she is picking up at nursery.

I had to go the finger food route - she loves sprouted mung beans, potato shaped like chips and roasted. Some vege can be given as finger food. Pasta she should be able to manage holding... my dd is only now beginning to get teeth (10.5mths) and managed pasta at 7.5 months as a finger food.

The spoon in hand trick may work with her... often with my dd i just had to get her eating something in the hand and then she would allow me to feed her alittle from the spoon. I find that she likes the avent spoon which is small and quite fine rather than bigger ones especially when she still does not always open her mouth wide.

I would not bother with the vaccum bowl and just give her one piece of food at a time.

I made a milkshake yesterday with yogurt, fruit and semolina (could also use millet) and put that in her tippy cup - she liked it. I bf my dd about 5 times a day - so unless you are really wanting to wean for yourself and not because a book says to then keep up the bf, especially until the spoon phobia goes away.

i will look for the thread i had about my dd as there might be some info there you may find of use.

all the best

here

Hi magic
similar problems here, but they have just started to resolve themselves in the last few days. Letting dd have a good long play with the finger food and attempt to feed herself with the spoon before I go anywhere near her seems to work. If I start trying to spoon anything in too early she goes wild, but after she's been having a go herself for a while she's much more co-operative. Something that might help with the pasta is, let it go really cold before you give it to her. It's much less slippery and easy to pick up. Also, if you use penne pasta you can hide a lot of puree inside the tubes. Have you tried avocado as finger food? It's got loads of calories. You could try mashing some and putting it inside the pasta tubes.