14mth old dd won't eat!

[lisbapalea]

Hi all,
My (strong willed) 14mth DD has recently started refusing all food - she will occasionally take something, e.g. cereal / a fish finger, will chew it a bit then spit it all out.
She's always been a rubbish eater - think I have totally messed up weaning as she won't take anything off a spoon unless it's pretty smooth (age 7-9mths consistency if you go by the plum organic pouches).

Do you think the spitting food out / not eating thing could be teething? She's been off colur for a few days now with dodgy guts, waking in the night, barely any daytime naps etc.
She is usually fairly rubbish at eating for me or her dad (will eat anything that the childminder gives her - think it's the distraction of other kids), but refusing or spitting out any food is a new low.
Would be glad of any advice - worried I have an anorexic baby!!
Thanks,
Lisa

if she's off colour she could well be off her food.

I messed up weaning with ds1. he wouldn't eat anything till 10mo, and I got so so stressed about it, mealtimes became high stress, me pressuring him to taste something, anything. his reaction: to not eat. and the worst part is I should have known better because my reaction to my gran force feeding me was to get super fussy and refuse to eat anything except 5 specific foods.

then I backed off totally (when he was 2.5 - I did the whole stress thing for nearly 2 years!). I read an amazing book called "my child won't eat". I now let him decide whether he is going to eat something or not, or how much. if he doesn't eat, I stay calm and say "oh, ok, go play while we finish our dinner". we offer him a range of healthy (and some less healthy) foods across the week. he still doesn't eat everything. but he eats more. he eats enough. and mealtimes are happy times.

can you try just backing off for a bit? let her get over this illness, then let her choose whether to eat? if she'll eat for a childminder you know she won't waste away.

Maybe let her eat from your plate? Although DS went through phases of not eating - it was quite worrying at the time but he did graze and later make up for it in a few weeks. His dietician said it's common for that to happen. She also said to encourage self feeding - hands or cutlery - so that when DS wanted to do it himself, he could.

I found that eating meals with DS was a much better way to encourage eating, even small amounts and will do that with DC2 (if wr get that far!)