Weaning - 8 month old struggling with transition from purées to textured foods?

[AllMyDucklings]

We’ve been weaning our 8 month old since 6 months using a combo of mainly purées with some BLW/finger food options.

After a slow start where he wouldn’t even eat purées that weren’t liquid enough (e.g he hated sweet potato) he’s now finally happily munching down larger portions of purées - but we’ve had zero luck transitioning him onto any more textured foods. He clearly wants to eat it but he just can’t figure out how to move it around his mouth so he’ll sort of make a “HNNNNN” noise and rock up and down in his chair for several minutes every bite - and after a few bites he’ll refuse any more. This applies both to most finger foods and any more textured spoon-fed foods / things chopped into small pieces.

Any advice, recipes, things to try? Is it just a matter of persevering and he’ll get there? Do we prioritise food quantity or texture, even if he won’t eat anything? (Our health visitor told us this week he both needs to eat more solids AND more textured food and when I told her that right now it’s one or the other, she had no real advice.)

• We currently do breakfast, lunch and (as of this week) dinner.
• Things like cooked fruit and veg puree, mashed banana/avocado/hard boiled or scrambled egg - he’ll usually only eat egg if mixed with yogurt for a smoother texture - and salt-free versions of what we eat blended until smooth. He has no issues with tastes (he’ll even eat slightly spicy curries).
• Weirdly he’ll gnaw off and swallow small bits of toast and home-made weaning muffins. But for example the other day we tried a ratatouille chopped up instead of blended and he gave up after 3 spoons - but ate a whole portion once blended.
• He had 3 teeth when we started introducing solids and in the first few weeks got 5 more, so he missed out on the experience of being able to ‘gum’ food without chunks coming off.

Also he’s 9 months not 8 …. 🤦‍♀️ sleep deprivation hitting hard this week. (Though he was 3.5 weeks early)

He simply has to learn. Give him what you eat and give it time. Normal food isn’t like purées so it’s almost like starting over again as it’s a whole new set of skills to learn. Just plunk down whatever you’re eating on his tray and don’t stress about if or how much he’s eating. Babies who start with finger foods don’t really eat much of anything until 10+ months, so I’d just expect as you’re starting now, it’s going to take 2-4 months before he’s eating lots. But that’s fine. It’s all part of the learning experience and being exposed to new tastes and textures.

But bigger chunks the better. Don’t chop things up. Think muffin size or toast finger or anything in the shape of chips.

Thank you! Sounds like it’s a matter of continuing to try then… a few nights ago I gave him some soft cooked carrot fingers and we had a very stressful bedtime over an hour later because turns out of the 3 tiny bites he took one was still in his mouth (I though I had checked!!!) and he refused to swallow or spit it out for another 15 minutes but was also desperate to breastfeed 😑… to be honest that’s mostly what we’d been doing for ‘dinner’ but the health visitor said he needed to be eating more which made me start to question things.

Oral motor issues? Tongue tie? Highly sensitive gag? I see a lot of babies like this and it’s usually one of the above. All of which can be fixed.

My greatest success was with a baby who ate nothing but purées and was eating everything after 48 hours with a bit of oral motor play but you need to find someone who can identify why your baby is struggling and help you with a plan.

The fact that he wants to eat these foods but can’t suggests something isn’t quite right.

Definitely not a tongue tie! Unsure about gag reflex, he’s been gagging much much less after the first few weeks but I think that might also be related to the fact that he just won’t really try deal with anything that might make him gag. I think it is mainly a motor skills issue, I’m just not sure how else to address it … had to stop giving cucumber spears and most similar food type ‘teethers’ as he was just biting off too big chunks and then holding them in his mouth for ages in distress and confusion as to what to do (I can handle a few minutes but 10+ minutes is not fun for anyone and I don’t think you’re meant to wait quite that long for them to figure it out??) and most softer finger foods he won’t put in his own mouth even though he’ll put everything else in there! We keep trying though. Has anyone had any luck with those silicone feeder things? Any specific brand to recommend or avoid?

Just doing that dance between insisting he does the thing vs waiting until he’s ready if it’s just a matter of time rather than giving him negative associations with the thing, which I guess is all parenting forever.

I spent time chewing with my mouth open (sorry, horrible image!) to show my baby what to do. Also making yum yum noises.

We’ve got the YUMM noises down but the more visibly chewing in his face is a good shout thank you!

We did all finger food and one of ours ate almost nothing till 10-11 months, the other one took to it earlier. I would have been thrilled with three bites of ratatouille! They still had lots of milk. They could both eat well by 12 months and massively dropped down in milk feeds at that stage.

That makes me feel better thank you! What was giving me pause is the huge difference in volume of pureed/mashed food he’ll happily eat and feeling like I’m somehow withholding food if I just insist on more finger foods and textures… also as his HV seemed to suggest he’s still breastfeeding too much even though solids so far have barely made a dent in that, and that’s with giving him food first 😂

Just keep trying, hes still so young, he needs to learn. Mine barely ate until she was about 14
months, it doesn’t matter unless there are known weight issues.

We swapped from milk first to food first at 9 months. Didn't make much difference to the non-eater but it made the HV happy.

Also remember everything is a stage and they all eat eventually. I'm watching tje one who didn't eat till almost 1 year swim 20 lengths of the pool right now and when we get home she'll be starving and want to eat a second dinner!