Sorry in advance for the long post!
Just at my wits end with feeding my 19month old and looking for any advice or tips from other people in similar situations.
DS has never been a great eater in my opinion and has found the transition from purées to solids extremely difficult. He was weaned using jars and pouches and I realise this may be some of the problem in regards to him now not chewing any food and disliking lumps. Around 8-10months he was able to start holding finger size foods in his hands and eating them etc but around 11months we had an incident when he put too much food in his mouth and ended up nearly choking. Since this he has been reluctant to put anything in his mouth himself and started to make himself sick on purpose with dinners so we took him back to more smoother purées and have been gradually introducing more lumps since. In between 11months and 15months he had started to gradually make progress and he would eat more solid meals I.e fish fingers and mash. The past few months however he has now gone backwards again and I’m now at the stage where he is reluctant to try anything either himself or me putting it in his mouth. If I give him food to just play and explore with it just ends up on the floor etc. He has no interest in food and could happily go hungry if he was left to it. The final straw has been today when we decided to give lunch out a go which we haven’t done for a few weeks as it’s never overly successful but past few weeks he has been eating little bits of bread and butter or showing more interest in food off of my plate etc. He started spitting the food out and gagging right from the off and even refused bread and butter which yesterday he was more than happy to eat so he’s now had no lunch and I’ve been reduced to tears. All of my friends baby’s eat anything and everything and so the advice they give I find to be quite patronising and it’s a case of just give him bits to try or let him go hungry and then when he is hungry enough he will have to eat and feed himself. I feel like I have tried to encourage him as much as possible but just feel so alone in this. He is just starting nursery this week aswell and yesterday threw up the first mouthful of lunch they gave him which I wasn’t at all surprised at but I feel like I need to crack the eating so he can be left at nursery and me not worry about him not eating. I know he’s not going to starve if he misses one lunch once a week but I would be happier if he had eaten obviously.
Any advice from anyone in a similar situation would be greatly appreciated!