From about 7 months old my LO has been a fab eater, 3 full meals a day (plus a snack or two in the last two months), would be spoon fed and also eat finger food and wasn’t that fussy. (The only things he didn’t like were savoury pouches and crunchy things like melty sticks, everything else went in!).
However for the last 6 weeks or so it’s like we’ve got a different child. Often refuses to eat with his hands at all, throws most food on the floor, and then in the last week or so has stopped eating most of his spoon fed meals after a few mouthfuls when he used to devour it all. Even classics like banana that were a go to are now not eaten.
He still has breakfast as normal (wheatabix with fruit usually), he used to just mostly eat what we eat in the evening, with the odd quick meal exception, then the usual sandwiches, oaty bar, yogurt/fruit pouch etc for lunch. Lunch and dinner are so variable now in terms of what actually gets eaten.
Context: he started nursery 3 weeks ago (but the food throwing/not eating with hands started before that), he eats there but they have to spoon feed everything. He’s still breastfed, 4 feeds a day (morning, nap 1, nap 2, bed time), the nap feeds are bottles when at nursery. He has started to want night feeds (usually one) again since starting nursery.
Any advice? Are the nap feeds interfering with solids? Is it a phase partly due to the disruption of nursery? Any tactics to get round the food throwing/refusal to eat with his hands? Also any ideas for getting him to use a spoon himself? He currently just throws it on the floor (obviously!). I’m worried as he’s on a low percentile for his weight, and as he gets moving more is having slower weight gain as it is!