Weaning

[loopylum]

Hi all,

DS is 15 months old (1 year corrected). We've been weaning since 4 months corrected and I still find meal times so stressful.

DS won't let you put a spoon near his mouth unless he is distracted at the moment. Sometimes he will tolerate a couple of spoonfuls but then will whack the spoon out of my hand.

He's got more restrictive with finger foods as well - he used to at least touch the wet things (banana avocado etc) but now he cries if we put them in front of him. He would eat melty sticks or similar dry snacks until the cows come home.

He is seen by SLT and dietician but they don't have any advice, just say that he's got age appropriate oromotor skills and not to give foods unsuitable for over his corrected age.

He started childminder this week and I thought maybe they might have some luck but they still struggle.

He's a wonderful little boy and I feel bad for getting so anxious about mealtimes! He does have high calorie prescription milk (we are going to slowly wean onto cows milk once he's settled at CM) which I think affects his motivation for foods as its not as filling.

Does anyone have tips?

He's absolutely never wanted to be spoon fed. I was advised by dietician and SLT to start weaning at 17 weeks corrected (before signs of readiness) because he was very small and has reflux.

Because he could only manage purees and baby rice we spoon fed him until we felt he was ready for thicker texture. Until June he would spoon feed himself (although he would try to bang the food off the spoon).

His oromotor skills were delayed so they advised not to give anything more than purees until July but he wasn't happy so we introduced bite and melt things like dry puffs. Once I noticed him moving food around in his mouth and chewing more I moved on to lumpier things which he seemed much happier with.

@babysharksb1tch thank you. He's so little I just don't want to even consider ARFID yet honestly. He's been so much better when he's not teething, but then it's hard to get back to where we were before.

I’m a dietitian myself, but as I’m not your son’s dietitian I can’t really give specific advise

It really bugs me that they still advise to wean early due to slow growth and reflux because there’s zero evidence to support it.

give yourself a break, a few days is fine, keep the formula I wouldn’t switch yet to cows milk

ignore posters above that say the melty sticks etc are just junk. Are they something that every toddler needs- no but at least he eats them. Continue what you are doing adding foods to the end - things like cream cheese/houmous can be good

I think the most important thing is to get meal times less stressful. No matter how he eats you need to not show any reaction, if he eats nothing pretend you don’t care even if inside you are so frustrated.

ensure he only sits in the high chair for the meal, ensure he is well positioned with footrest, as soon as he is distressed or upset take him out the high chair

feel free to message if you have any other general questions I could answer

definitely do check out solid starts their resources are great

If your little one was premature, I’m guessing you’re maybe still under a hospital paediatrician? But you could ask them what services are on offer for help with feeding. In my area they’re called the Infant Feeding Team, I’m not sure if that’s the same everywhere. It sounds like you’re doing a great job under really stressful circumstances. I hope things improve for everyone soon.

With the 'wet' foods like banana and avocado have you tried rolling in something like flaxseed or kept a bit of skin on to make it less slippy to hold?

Will he take pre-loaded spoons and bring to his mouth instead of you feeding him? I usually give my little one their own spoon to hold onto and then I'll pre-load a second spoon and allow them to bring it to her mouth as they please, the introduction of having a clean spoon just for them to hold and bang around and chew on has really helped us.

We've gone full finger foods now and not worrying if he doesn't do much with them, because we realised the spoon feeding is starting everyone out. So we're just putting a few pieces of food out in front of him (stuff similar to our meals) in the high chair during meals and he's improving every meal - he ate a bit of banana yesterday (did spit it out though) and ate half a slice of toast (which he has refused for the last week and a half).

He is also happier touching the rest of the food and seemed very interested in a piece of broccoli yesterday (touching multiple times) but got distracted. He did try to put a squashed blueberry in his mouth as well but it fell out of his hand and he lost interest.

I think a big part of it is how stressed we were getting about mealtimes and we've really tried to not show if we are stressed.

Spoon feeding is stressing every one out**

We had a good dinner today - made him some mashed potato balls as we were having beef kofte pitta and some wedges. He ignored the balls but stared my husband down for his kofte and pitta, ate half a slice of pitta bread with some mayonnaise and tried the beef kofte although it was too crumbly and he couldn't really manage it so spat it out eventually.