Help. At wits end with DC2 (20mo) eating and sleep

[NameChange30]

Help meeeeee. DC2 is 20 months old and barely eats. She goes to nursery 2 days a week and sometimes eats ok there but not always. At home she rejects and/or throws everything on the floor. I find myself thinking WTF is the point of putting food in front of her?!

For context, she has allergies (non Ige to cow's milk, soya and egg) so we exclude all those things from her diet which makes it hard enough anyway.

She is breastfed and she gets a feed in the morning and at bedtime, and before nap if I'm not working. I was hoping that limiting feeds would have helped ensure she ate more solids, but no. She asks me for milk constantly and I am getting sick of it. If I give her a sippy cup of oat milk she might have a bit but mostly just tips it upside down and gets oat milk all over the floor.

She is waking around 4am and not settling back to sleep, and I think this is because she's hungry. I used to breastfeed her at that time and she would go back to sleep until morning but I stopped as I got sick of doing it.

Any advice or sympathy would be much appreciated. I'm exhausted and frustrated and sick of the whinging all day (because surprise surprise she's hungry and tired). You'd think as she's DC2 I'd know what I was doing by now but apparently not.

I meant to add, I'm coming to the conclusion that i'll Have to stop breastfeeding her altogether, which was sooner than I'd intended, and she won't be happy, but I'm wondering if that's the only way.

What sort of things will she eat?
My DD was a terrible eater. Never took a bottle and I stopped bf at 15 months. She has never drunk cows milk, not even on cereal. The Health Visitor always advised to consider what she ate over the course of a day, rather than analysing individual meals. I found she ate very small amounts (which was a bit of a shock after her older brother who demolished everything in sight), so took to giving 5 smaller 'meals' throughout the day rather than 3 big ones. She had a very limited diet though and didn't really improve that until about 7yo.

Thanks for your reply. Even if you consider what she eats over the course of a week (and not just one day) her diet is pretty crap.

She'll eat:
Some fruit, not any fruit and not all the time, but it's the thing she eats most reliably at home and nursery
Some (not all) dairy-free yoghurt
Sometimes pasta if it's covered in dairy-free Parmesan alternative
Chicken nuggets
Raisins
Sometimes chips
Sometimes paella
Sometimes Pom bears or other baby crisp things (mostly not interested)
Sometimes a baby food pouch (obviously she's too old for baby food really, but as we are limited as to what she can have due to her allergies, and there are one or two pouches that she likes and will sometimes eat, we do offer occasionally)

Some things she used to eat happily but is rejecting now:
breakfast cereal
porridge
ham
plain chicken
fish including smoked salmon or plain cooked fish
bread

We can't for the life of us persuade her to eat a single vegetable. Even things like cucumber, carrot and pepper sticks get rejected completely or one bite and thrown on the floor.

I find that she can be interested in what I'm eating but quickly loses interest when I actually give it to her. As a result I can't eat in peace and some of my meal ends up on the floor and/or cold and/or half chewed.

I'm not enjoying her atm, can you tell?! 😫

I got as much food into her as I could today... fingers crossed for a better night!

My DD is 19months and has the same allergies as yours DD. She’s formula fed, but still has her prescription formula, and has a good aversion. We stick to a lot of the same foods for ease.

things I’ve found the help:
she eats better in a non pressured way, so no highchair or using the highchair in the lounge with the tv on ( I know this can be frowned upon) but the distraction works.

eating in cafes or social situations is usually better.

prefers feeding herself with a spoon. So we do alot of pasta dishes (her favourite). With tomato based sauces, dairy free cheese sauce, pesto etc. always sneak in some nutritional yeast, chia seeds and vegetables.

we have stopped trying to give her milk alternatives to drink (dietician guidance) instead we have started the milk ladder, in hope we can progress that way. Has your DD started?

DD still refuses a-lot of food, mainly ones offered for breakfast (toast, cereal, porridge etc). It’s tough you have my sympathy.

OP so many of us have been there/are there! My first thought would be that this isn’t a breastfeeding problem. As you’ve noticed, limiting or changing bf has no impact on her consumption of solids. Not sure if you have come across it but there is a great book called My Child Won’t Eat by Dr Carlos Gonzalez which contains a wealth of sensible information about toddler eating within the framework of natural term weaning (ie acknowledging that human children are biologically expected to breastfeed until somewhere between 2 and 7).

Is it possible that she is controlling/regulating her own intake appropriately? Toddlers have the most amazing self-regulation which we as adults have lost. It would not be unusual for my DS (22mo) to eat a few spoons of oats, a handful of dried fruit, a slice of ham, 5 pieces of pasta and half a pouch of yoghurt in a whole day. But combined with about 600ml of water and 2 breastfeeds, it is enough for him. If he wants more, he eats more. It has been extremely nerve-wracking trying to trust him with this though. The instinct is to keep offering more and more in the hope that he will just eat a few more bites. I’m learning to accept that our lives are better when we adopt the mantra of ‘it’s my job to offer the food, it’s his job to eat it, if he needs it’.

The waking at 4am thing - it’s the coldest part of the night and when we naturally enter the lightest phase of sleep. This is the toughest part of the night to ‘crack’ in my opinion. Pitch dark and an extra layer could be a good place to start. I am very pro-bf but I wouldn’t reintroduce a feed at this point, like you say you just get frustrated and it becomes habitual rather than nutritious (not saying that this is bad, but it’s something I couldn’t live with). What happens when she wakes? Does she ever put herself back to sleep?

Sending a lot of solidarity and respect to you.