Toddler food refusal

[user14943608381]

I really need help here.

Dd is 2 and 3 months. She’s now faltering growth as her weight fell a centile, her height had fallen at her previous check (born under 9th so one centile is faltering growth). She’s a nightmare with food. I’m obviously the worlds worst mother as we’ve had a rough go of it on introducing solids. I’ll give the greatest hits for some background and then describe our problem. We have an appointment with a dietitian on the 5th but honestly if there’s anything we could try in the interim I’d be eternally grateful.
So backstory: low birth weight and constant grief from HV about weight gain. Born 2nd centile and climbed to 9th by 6 months, ebf. Then in between 9/25 by 7. Got bollocking from HV and Told she needed to eat 3 full meals a day and not bowl fulls to make sure she gained weight. Did this and she lost weight. HV accused husband of under feeding her (didn’t ask what we fed her ) and said we need to do whatever it takes to make her eat, crying need to spoon it in as mouth open. This felt so wrong and she became painfully constipated. We went to blw and she was better.
By 1 she was just under 25th centile, HV did one yr check and was told again she needed to be eating more and now to stop breastfeeding and limit her because I was holding her back, but looking back she ate brilliantly. Pressure to eat more led to outright refusal and she dropped a centile. Told to cut out breastfeeding all together. I did the opposite and introduced more again and her eating picked back up and she climbed half a centile again.
MIL gave her really spicey food, think Thai green chillis. MIL had lied to us and said no chillis in it. This led to a total aversion even at nursery. We paid to see a private dietitian. Dietitian assessed her and she’s got no physical barriers to eating.

She got back on track and then I fell pregnant. I had awful sickness and couldn’t be around food as I’d be vomiting, meal times fell to DH, although I’d still do the prep. The few meals he asked me to sit through I ended up being sick in a bag. My dad then died and I was away for practically 2 weeks. At some point dh introduced distractions, not sure when as he’d obviously been lying to me, i found out when I came down one lunch and saw him giving her screen time to eat. So over the past few months she’s been super ill and fought going into her chair so we’ve been reliant on a distraction to get into the chair but somewhere along the line she’s stopped feeding herself. She will only do it here and there now, mainly for fruit, veg and biscuits. If left to her own devices I don’t think she’d eat. We’ve tried to whatever you eat you eat approach and she ate like a sparrow for 3 days (I mean like one bite of each meal max), we get her involved in cooking (which she loves) and it worked for a bit but now has stopped, making sure she’s got a safe foods on her plate (typically fruit or cheese) but she’ll just eat them and leave the rest, new plates and new cutlery, Spacing out her food so she’s got a good break, wash hands routine but she’ll just push things around and then say I’ve finished. She eats fine at nursery it’s just at home. The things she likes are very low calories like fruit and veg. She’s had a fbc done and is on a mild iron supplement to keep her iron levels up. She’s unwell very often which can’t help.

What can I do to help her to eat independently again? She’s iffy on trying new things, and goes off Things all of a sudden

@Nat6999

Would she eat more if you made picnic meals? Let her help prepare the picnic, maybe get her a little picnic basket & then put a blanket down & let her enjoy her food in a relaxed setting. Will she drink milkshakes & smoothies? If she will then make them with whole milk or even cream, add calories in any way you can, ice cream, custard, fruit syrups, freeze fruit to add. Make a game of adding different fruits & guessing what colour the drink will be.

She won’t really drink a milkshake, wont even have nesquik. She’ll only drink cow and oat milk, she asked for mummy milk the other day but I don’t think she can remember how to latch as she bit me, so I gave her some in a cup and she took one sip and said yucky and chucked it on the floor. She won’t eat desserts or even try custard or ice cream, she used to always ask for lollies in the summer but then would throw them on the floor because it’s too cold. Dietitian said to offer her pudding with a meal, so I made cookies and crumble and rice pudding… none of it got eaten. Won’t even touch it. She won’t eat cake, only brownies and cookies

I'd stick broadly to mealtimes as you have other things to do as well.
So breakfast, mid morning snack, lunch, mid afternoon snack, evening meal, drink & biscuit before bedtime
For something like a lunch platter, if you're all eating together - put on the table things like bread, crisps, salad bits, ham/cheese and ask her what she wants or just put a small selection on a plate for her, like half a slice of bread, a couple of slices of cucumber and cubes of cheese. You mentioned that tacos/wraps worked well, this kind of pick and mix meal works for us too

I think it's interesting that she's drawn to fruit and veg. Maybe her body processes those foods better. You could try giving her vegan food to see if she'd prefer that. Try it for a few weeks and see how she responds to this. Let her body and intuition guide the way.
I also see the grazing idea as being a potential solution. Having crackers, cut fruit and veg, biscuits on a little table she can reach might encourage her to eat.
Does she like plain food, like plain pasta or just bread? You could leave some cooked pasta and bits of bread on the table too?

I take it you are still using whole milk for her to drink? How much will she drink? Does she eat yogurt? She eats way more foods than my 3 year old but we now make sure there's safe options on the table for him eg he likes plain pasta with butter but not a sauce so now we will serve the pasta, sauce, cheese, butter all in separate bowls on the table and he can choose what he wants- always pasta with butter but at least he eats and one day he might decide he wants to try the sauce or the cheese v on it. He loves pizza so we make homemade pizza, soda bread pizza, tortilla pizza etc. So far he prefers cheese pizza but will eat some pepperoni pizza and will sometimes try our pizza with different toppings.
He loves yogurt so now we serve vanilla Skyr sometimes plain often with a fruit pouch or purée added and also added oats .
Some people will disagree with my food options and say it is making him be fussy as he knows he can get what he wants but I disagree. I know my son and he would not eat sooner than eat something he doesn't like. If your daughter is under weight I'd be serving food little and often. At least 3 main meals and 2 snacks a day but you could also up it offer breakfast, snack, lunch, snack, dinner, dessert, supper to try and increase calories. I'd have a cupboard of snacks/ easy foods she can help herself to especially when you are feeding. Make sure there's fruit/ veg always available making on a serving platter in living room etc. You don't need to worry about the TV being on for it. I'd just try and do the majority of main meals at a dinner table screen free but if occasionally she gets her dinner in front of the TV it really isn't going to do long term harm.