7 month old screams after three spoonfuls of food!

[strugglingmummy00]

Please help!

My second daughter is seven months and we have been weaning her since about five months old.

She took to food really well and was very keen to eat. More recently I have found that she screams most times that I present her with her meal.
The crying is not a whimper it's a proper scream, and when I'm dealing with it three times a day I am finding that it is getting me down a bit.

She is largely fed with a spoon fed but enjoys her finger food too. However I find that I can't just leave her with finger food because not much actually goes in.

My HV advised to drop her milk feeds as she might be crying because she is already full at mealtimes, to be honest since I did this she is still crying each time I put her in her highchair.

I have tried the following in an effort to stop her from getting upset:
*Left her just with finger food
*Given her a spoon to play with
*Encouraged her to sit with her sister at meal times and watch her eat
*Fed them both meals at the same time
*Given her plenty to drink
*Given her a mini milk top up before meals so she doesn't approach them starving hungry.

If anyone has any suggestions of what to do I would be really grateful because I am struggling not to cry each mealtime myself!

Thanks in advance. xx

She's very young still so I don't think it matters if she doesn't eat much, as long as she's getting plenty of milk. I don't think I'd drop milk feeds this young. Just let her have what she wants and then get her down, would she sit on your lap while your older DD finishes her meal? As long as she's happy with it, I'd let her play with finger food and just not worry if she doesn't really eat it. Good luck, she may just take a while to get going with solids.

Poor advice from HV. Food is fun until 1- is the phrase right?
Give her the milk as normal and let her play with the food. If she wants to eat she will. Maybe she hates her highchair?
Sounds stressful though, you are right to look at what's happening and try and change it up.

I would try not to focus on how much she's eating. If she seems to prefer finger foods, does it matter if not much goes in? The key thing is to give her the opportunity to try different flavours and textures and generally enjoy mealtimes. I would let her join her sister at mealtimes and just pop a few pieces from her sister's meal on her tray and leave her to it. At her age, milk is still her main source of nutrition so it doesn't matter if she doesn't eat much solids. And I would ignore the HV's advice to cut back on milk.

If it's all getting stressful, don't feel you need to give three meals a day. The NHS advice talks about moving to 3 meals around 8-9 months so there's no rush.

Finally, could she be teething? The spoon may be hurting her gums hence the reaction.

DS1 was like this. He was very pale and started getting tired easily. Turned out he was massively anaemic (born without/with very low iron store), and eating solids just took too much energy - just wanted to bf all the time.

GP fobbed us off several times until the HV convinced him to send DS for a blood test. Once he was on iron replacement he quickly started eating, and at 3yo he is fit and well, and a good eater.

I don't know how common this is, but may be worth checking out - make sure there are no health issues preventing her from eating well.

Thanks everyone for your help. I have moved the high chair to be even closer to big sis, given her milk as normal.

The progress update is that for the past two days our little one has had:

*porridge for breakfast - seems to scream if it's not coming fast enough?

*small lumps of finger food such as rice and potato for mains - seems to be happy enough for me to put small lumps in her mouth with my fingers

*lots of apple fruit pots - now worrying that I have raised some sort of baby with a sweet tooth because she seems to scream when I give her savoury purees/ baby food !!!

Anyway I am hanging in there with what feels like a huge experiment every meal time.

Any more suggestions welcome. Thanks in advance. xx

With DS1 I just put him in the high chair about an hour after a milk feed, regardless of whether it was meal time or not, and just give him bits of pasta/toast/fruit/veg and let him have a go. It took a long time to get him to 3 meals a day (because he was anaemic) but we built it slowly and at his pace. A lot of food got wasted, and it was a lot of trial and error but we got there, and now at 3yo he is a good eater.

He was always interested in what was on my plate - even I it was the same as his So I would give him bits of my dinner which made him happy. He used to resist being spoon fed, so one day I just dumped a bit of yoghurt on his tray and he ate it with his hands! Made a hell of a mess but at least he ate. He had a lot of meals like this and I gradually reintroduced the spoon by loading one up, giving it to him to put in his mouth while I loaded a second. I think he just wanted to do it all himself.

Try not to worry, 7mo is early days. If she likes sweeter things, maybe try the sweeter veg like sweet potato. She could be getting upset
as she's picking up in you getting upset. Just keep offering an let her get on with it rather than trying to persuade her to try it. She'll not starve and if she feels the pressure is off she may well be more inclined to get eating. Easier said than done I know - I've been there!

My DS used to scream if I didn't feed him quickly enough, he just got too frustrated to wait for the next spoonful! My DS loved sweet potato and any veggies mixed with it too. To get him off fruit purees, he loved Apple and pear, I used to mix them with veggy ones and slowly increase the proportion of veg til he was happy without fruit.