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Baby Difficult to Feed

2 replies

BePlumQuail · 16/08/2025 19:45

Hi,

My baby is now 6months old and has always been difficult to feed. He wasn't gaining weight properly in the first few months and after multiple tests (all show nothing medically wrong) and a referal to the dieticians he is now on high calorie formula. He has been doing OK and gaining weight well, but recently he's become even more difficult to feed.
Hell often only take around 50ml of formula and then refuse to drink anymore. We can sometimes get up to 100ml in him but this takes over an hour.
On a good day he'll end up having a really good feed before bed, but not always.
We have an appointment with the doctors Friday to check for anything like silent reflux but my gut feeling is he's just not food motivated and would rather be doing other things (he's very busy and loves playing!). He feeds best when hungry and sleepy but these things rarely coincide.
I worry most about hydration at the moment, but he only seems to like water on really hot days so I assume thats when he actually gets thirsty between feeds.
Incidentally he also seems to absolutely hate solids, we started with veg so I wasn't expecting him to like them, but I was expecting him to be curious but he won't even touch the food without encouragement (but he will try and eat a baby wipe 🤣)
I was mainly wondering if any one else has had this issue and if so do you have any tips for better feeds?!
Thank you ❤️

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Are your children’s vaccines up to date?
Limehawkmoth · 16/08/2025 20:11

It’s really difficult to deal with Op ….

my eldest used to take 1.5 hours per breast feed… wouldn’t eat chewable solids for long time…then veg and fish ( fish is really good option btw for those who don’t want to chew ). And my goodness did he eat slowly… it’d take him 39 mins to eat his dinner . Grain of rice individually, playing with food around his plate

he’s now aged 31. Skinny as a Rake. Still eats extraordinarily slowly . But at aged 20, after years of constant runny noses and blocked nose , he was diagnosed with nasal polyps. He can’t fecking breathe when he is chewing 😮🤦🏼‍♀️.

If only I’d have known that in first few months when I was convinced I couldn’t breast feed and felt useless, and was exhausted with continuous breastfeeding to point of sobbing uncontrollably as he jerked off breast and screamed 😢

these sort of things are hard to detect in young children…they can’t tell you … the runny nose we put down to hay fever and teething for ages as it was so easy to miss

Hang in there. Don’t make food a battle ground . Let him set the pace. meat is quite difficult for a lot of kids if it’s not mince. Try to eat at same time if you can so they see it’s social activity. Remember kids have to try something multiple times before they will eat it readily so keep offering wide range . I found getting them involved in cooking from even 18 months helps enormously …breaking up mushrooms with their hands, smelling herbs and spices, stirring stuff … get them interested in food. You may end up with a child who is good cooks like we did once they reached around 10-11 who would like to cook family meals fairly often!

if he’s not loosing weight, eating varied veg and protein, some carbs he’ll be ok for this short phase . If he’s not gaining weight with height..or it continues to be very limited range seek medical bc advice again.

good luck

BePlumQuail · 17/08/2025 07:56

Thank you for replying.
We had all sorts of issues breastfeeding as well so I understand your pain on this 😕
It did cross my mind that maybe he can't breathe 100% well when feeding, my husband had adenoids removed when little so maybe that's hereditary, I'll ask the doctor about that too!
Definitely going to get him involved in cooking, he already sits and watches us cook, so as soon as he can stir, he'll be stiring :) family meals are harder as my husband works so late, but we do try

Anyway, hopefully it's just a phase or a simple answer from the doctor.

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