Please help! My baby has stopped eating!

[breadandhoney]

DD is almost 9 mths old and over the couple of weeks she has seemed less and less interested in eating. The past couple of days she has started refusing her food more and more. She started solids at 5.5 mths and was taking 3 meals a day. Now she clamps her mouth shut completely, right from the start of the meal and last night it got to the point where she wouldn't let me put even one spoonful in. i give her finger foods but she doesn't eat much of them, just sucks them a bit and mushes them in her hands really. she will eat raspberries. that is basically it. and petits filous -when she feels like it! i don't think it is her being fussy about certain foods though, she seems to just not want to be spoonfed. but she doesn't eat enough with finger food. last night she even refused to put any of it in her mouth at all after a couple of sucks on a piece of chicken.

this morning she clamped her mouth shut as soon as i put her in her high chair. i tried weetabix, fruit puree, toast fingers. eventually i gave her the 3 remaining raspberries, which she ate. that was the total of her breakfast. oh, and one branflake from my bowl! she doesn't even guzzle her milk in the morning any more. She was weaned from the breast onto formula from a cup at 7.5 months. She usually guzzles it down. These mornings she is only taking half a cup. maybe no connection there to the feeding problem but want to give you all the information.

has anyone got any idea how i go forward from here? i foresee lunchtime being another battle and her not eating anything then either. it seems like she wants to be independent but when i give her a spoon she puts the wrong end in her mouth and will not let me guide her hand she will just throw the spoon on the floor in a temper if i try!

please help as i am starting to worry that she is not getting the nutrients she needs! as well as the learning experience that she needs when it comes to eating! she has also been sleeping from 7pm to 7am from 6 months and i really don't want her refusing to eat to cause her to start waking in the night/early in the morning due to hunger.

sorry this is so long. i am feeling desperate.

any ideas?

Not sure if this helps but my DD went through a phase at the same age. It lasted about two months and it was a very difficult time. I tried everything. I found that meatballs, mini pancakes and yoghurt worked. She became obssessed with bread fo a while and really wouldn't eat much else and always refused a spoon in a very similar to how your DD does. I persisted daily for a long time and eventually she came round and now at 1 eats anything. At the time I put a thread out on here and found out that many babies had gone through a phase like this at the same age. I also found similar situations with mothers and babies at groups. I think they are learning how to assert their control and decision making. I hope this at least reassuring and hopefully it wont last forever. Go see your Gp if you are overly concerned, that might put your mind at rest. In all though I am sure you Dd wont let herself starve..not in her instinct. Good luck!

Thank you Fifi! It is reassuring to know someone else has gone through this and come out the other side. I really hope you're right that she won't starve herself. So, did you just let your DD eat whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted over those 2 months? I have been panicking about DD getting protein and carbs and veggies at every meal. maybe i should just let her eat a petit filou if that is all she wants?

also not sure if it is better to try and restrict her eating to mealtimes only, so that she is hungrier, or to offer her food throughout the day in the hope that she will eat something !

Hi,

I just gave her(or at least tried to) food at mealtimes really and I guess I still do. I would offer her anything and everything I could. Was an expensive time. I went on a mission with some annabel karmel type finger foods and stuff but it was very disheartening when they didn't always work. She just wanted bread and as you say petit filous. I probably shouldn't have given into what she wanted but as you say I didn't want her to starve and at least with the yoghurts she still accepted the spoon. I sometimes tried to give her a spoonful or two of yoghurt and then put some veg puree or jarred food on the spoon to see if she would notice. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes she would notice and I felt a bit creul. I also found that if I offered her a bit of food when she was playing in the living room she would be more likely to eat it as it seemed more exciting I guess. Have you tried chunks of cheese, that sometimes worked with my DD. I guess they all have different tastes though. Let me know how it goes!! It is best to keep persisting. One good piece of advice I got from a mumsnetter was to not let on to your Lo that mealtimes are stressing you out. They notice and are more likely to feel stressed themselves and therefore less likely to eat. Hard I know but keep at it..It WILL work out eventually :)

Have you tried just sitting with her at mealtimes and letting her eat off your plate?

I wouldn't worry about her not getting a perfectly balanced meal each time, she won't starve! There have been some interesting studies that have actually shown that when given free choice babies choose a pretty balanced diet for themselves - even if they seem to spend days eating loads of one thing and then go off that and pick something else instead, taken over a week or month it all balances out.

give her a spoon. Have her try use the spoon herself. Inbetween her mouthfuls, popone of you own spoonfuls in.

DS2 refused to be fed,but was happy to cover himself with food.

Id say dont restrict food to what she will eat - keep offering a good variety.

thank you all so much for your advice.

fifi your experience sounds just like mine so far. i've tried sneaking some "dinner" between spoonfuls of petits filous but it hasn't worked. that just means meal over at that point! and, like you, it made me feel cruel.

rita apart from breakfast we don't eat at the same time, as it just isn't practical. however, i have tried "sharing" my toast with her at breakfast time and taking the pressure off a bit but she's not great at eating toast. it tends to get sucked and chucked! you have reassured me about the perfectly balanced meals. thanks! i'll just try to offer her a variety and hopefully whatever she does eat will even itself out in the long run!

hatti i give her a spoon every mealtime but mostly it just ends up on the floor after she has put food all over herself. she can't manage to feed herself yet, but i really get the impression she wants to. i think this independence is a big part of the problem of getting her to take food from my spoon. however, i know it is important for her to learn so i continue giving her the spoon. hopefully she'll get the hang of it soon!

thanks again for all the advice. i'll be back here if and, hopefully, when there is any improvement!

In my experience my ds eats so much better when we sit down for a meal together, rather than me feeding him. We were waiting for ds to go to bed before having our dinner, but after rearranging things so we eat earlier and he goes to bed later meals are much more enjoyable - we can just chuck a few things in ds's direction while we eat ours. I know that's not possible for everyone, but I do think eating together in a relaxed, sociable way can help kids eat better, especially if they object to being fed.

i'm totally with you on that, in theory! however, dh isn't home from work until after dd is in bed so we eat then. we do eat together on sundays though. we make a roast and all "sit down" together, which is lovely. i tend to attempt to feed dd just before we all sit down then give her some finger food (chicken, veg, etc.) while we eat. i love having her at the table with us and all of us "talking" together as a family. when she is older i am planning to eat with her at the table most nights as i think family meals are very important for children, for social reasons too!

I'm so glad to find this thread as I'm going through exactly the same thing with my dd. She was a brilliant eater till about 8 and a half months and it's been downhill from there really. To make it worse, she had a tummy upset last week so the weight has dropped off her really dramatically. I really need her to eat well now and for lunch today she refused everything except a bit of yoghurt and fruit. I had to fight back the tears I'm so worried - she's barely 9th centile as it is and looks so skinny compared to other nine month olds. This thread has reassured me a bit, thank you.

Rhubarb hope you will try some of the advice on this thread too. I know it is difficult but try not to get upset. If you are very worried about her weight why not take her to GP for a check-up? This will put your mind at ease about that issue, then you'll just have the small (!!) issue of trying to get her to eat to deal with! Glad not to be going through this alone, but do hope your DD starts to eat more soon :)

Thanks Breadandhoney. She had a freakish day of devouring everything I put in front of her yesterday, but back to pursed lips today.

When dd4 was going through this my h/v said that i needed to look at food eaten across the whole week.
As long as there was a broad range of foods each week then it didn't matter if all she ate on a monday was yoghurt.
Now she will eat lots of different things but not necessarily when I want her to.
A baby's instinct is to eat when hungry, they won't starve.
When the next growth spurt comes in they'll eat for england.