Weaning nightmare

[orevero]

The title might be an exaggeration, apologies for that!

Hello,
My daughter was mostly breast fed until 3 and a half months then slowly moved out of the breast and was 100% formula fed by 5 months.
I started stage 1 weaning at exactly 6 months, following recent guidelines, health visitor advice, etc.
It's been 3 weeks and I'm still stuck on the so called "first tastes" (sweet root veg, potatoes, pear, apple, banana). Basically, she doesn't like anything other than milk! She does sometimes loves the baby rice (made with her formula milk), to the point of opening her mouth for more! Everything else, it's a genuine struggle! To be fair to her, she doesn't spit out the food, most of the time, but she's not keen, she doesn't open her mouth for food, I have to make her smile and then sneak the spoon in gently, and she constantly turns her head away.
From everything I’ve read, we should be moving on to green veg, cheese, etc. but I’m not sure it’s worth trying when she can even handle the basics.
Do any of you have gone through the same? If yes, how did you approach it? All my friends didn’t seem to have any problems or take this long, saying that, most of them started at 5 and a half months or earlier.
Is there any advice you could give me on how to encourage her to enjoy food more? Is that even possible?

Thanks a lot in advance for all your help!

she might just not be ready... some babies aren't until later.
so i would just forget the solids for a while until she shows a genuine interest.

you could have her in the highchair up at the table with you at mealtimes and give her some food to play with so she gets used to the tastes and textures and just see how she gets on... she'll make it clear when she wants more!

what about just offering her finger foods. at 6mths there is no need to offer purees etc. just give her bits of food that you would eat. stick it on het high chair tray and let her explore it.

milk is still her main source of nutrition at this age as it shoukd be. weaning at this age is about exploring new textures and flavours, so just put stuff in front of her and let her have a go. she may wrll just want to do it herself and not like being spoonfed.

Thank you both for all the tips!
Yes, she seems to enjoy more finger food, and her eye-hand coordination is already very good so I might go down that road more often.
She generally has a good appetite - for milk that is! So it's a bit demoralising when she wouldn't eat anything else.

Thanks again

OP, please don't get stressed about it. (I know how you feel though!) It really does sound like she's not ready yet. My DD didn't really get properly started on solids until she was nearly 10 months old. You could try leaving off solids and going back to milk for a couple of weeks, and then seeing how she does? As other posters have said, milk is the main source of nutrition until around 12 months, so you don't have to worry that she's missing out.

Two of mien weren't interested in solids until well past 6mths, ds2 did t get interested till 10mths, and dd not til about 8mths. The are 11 and almost three and eat really well.

If she likes her milththay is fine, food is for fun until they are one!

I'm weaning DC 2; she's 26 weeks and pretty much the same, except I'm not doing spoon feeding. She has not digested much TBH, she's more into sucking, licking and gumming than actually eating. Not concerned because DC1 was pretty much the same - he took more milk than solids til he was well over a year - it was more like 15 months before he had what you might call 3 meals a day and started dropping milk feeds. He eats brilliantly now, especially for his age (he's 2.10) and is relaxed about trying new foods and able to accept them into his diet easily. So don't sweat it, if anything just back off and let her get on with it.