My baby hates my food.

[MrsKoala]

DS2 is nearly 8mo and pretty much hates all the food i cook for him. The only things he likes are smooth baby cereals mixed with milk, petit filous and jars of puddings.

He hates greek yogurt and pureed fruit, all the savoury annabel karmel recipes i have cooked (even the sweet potato and ones with apple in).

We attempted BLW but he choked badly 3 times and everyone seemed to hate it.

I have batch cooked loads of meals but i end up throwing the lot away and he cries and cries because he is still hungry. He is also going off drinking his milk so wants something more solid. He has had an upset tummy in the night after eating my food too.

I have a very difficult toddler with suspected ASD and MIL is dying and lives a way away, so for the last couple of months we have relied on packets/cereals of food and now i'm worried i have ruined his taste for real food. I have very little time to spend cooking and don't know what to give him.

He also hates jars and Ellas kitchen pouches.

Yes he really does Art, and that is after his morning bottle of 7oz of milk an hour earlier.

He's a tank. He's about 26lb at 7.5mo.

Try a few different toppings on the toast - peanut butter is a good one if you have it. Even if he just sucks the topping off and leaves the toast, you've got some protein and good fats into him.

Good luck OP

Or Scott's porridge oats

I found adding his favourite yoghurt to the end of the spoon of whatever I was giving him. Also adding cream to to dishes helped to get him to eat things. Took him a good 2-3 months to get into eating now he yums most things away.

Yes, my DS likes porridge mixed up with some fruit purée or mashed banana to sweeten it.

Cheers, i'll get some in Ruth, it's not something we eat here usually.

I'll take a picture of his face when he realises he's got to feed himself rather than open his mouth and get it shovelled in

Cottage that's a great idea!

Toast is the medium through which I've snuck many a food and new tastes into my spoon refusers. All of the following on toast:

• mashed up low salt/low sugar baked beans
• avocado
• soup
• scrambled eggs with a dollop of cream cheese mixed through to make it more spreadable
• mash-up of avocado, cream cheese and minutely diced tomato

The meals i have done which go down better are the creamy ones like cauli cheese and fish pie. Red lentils and sweet potato was NOT popular. Neither was chicken casserole. And greek yogurt and pear puree just seemed to offend him. He was outraged at it.

My ds is fussy too. He just looks at something then decides yay or nay!

My advice is not to stress over it too much. It's pointless.

Give him what he likes and wants and I'm certain he won't be deficient in anything or suffer as a consequence of it.

Sometimes, when I give ds something new, that he has previously turned his nose up at, I switch the TV on in the kitchen, he gets distracted by it and eats the food and I'm thinking wow!

I don't watch this unfold because I wonder if he can sense that I'm desperate for him to eat it. Crazy I know!!

Have you tried grated cheese in a bowl as a snack?

My picky ds loves it

Haven't tried cheese yet, no.

This morning he had a bottle of 6oz at 6.30 then we all sat down to scrambled eggs and toast at 7.30. None of which got remotely near ds2 mouth. I don't think he even realised it was food. He just smushed it with his hands and didn't attempt to eat it.

He is now crying for food. Sigh. I shall do weetabix and mashed banana I suppose.

I would just repeat as you did. So milk, offer food 30 mins later. If he doesn't eat and hungry offer some more milk. He's just a baby. At next meal offer food your having again and sit him with you, if he Eats great, if not offer milk a bit after.

At 7.5 months for example mines typical day would be something like:

8am breastfeed
8.30am 1/2 boiled egg and 1/4 avocado.
10am breastfeed
12pm breastfeed
1pm 1/4 salmon fillet, spoon rice, small piece cauliflower
3.30pm breastfeed
6pm breastfeed
7pm few pieces chicken shredded into small strips, some beetroot in slices, inner bit of cucumber. Some plain yogurt
8.30pm breastfeed
9pm bed. 11pm breastfeed. Sleep until 8am

Art wow! That's a lot isn't it?

Mine is 7 month and on 2 small meals (as in 2 tablespoons of soft food or the size of her fist finger food - based on hv and books). The rest is milk.

Wasn't going to increase till nearer 8 months! Should I? She doesn't clear her plate iyswim but tastes everything.

So her day might be...

7am bf
8.30am small bowl of porridge with fruit or toast fingers/yoghurt
10am bf
12.30pm bf
1.30pm 1/4 avocado, some pasta shapes, a finger of cheese OR a puree/bake (half a pouch).
3 pm bf
5pm bf
7pm bf and bed
11pm and 3am bf (she's slightly reverse cycling as extremely nosey in the day!!).

Not really lots. It's about the same as you surely. Is half my boiled egg and 1/4 avocado isn't loads. That's what I offer, baring in mind a % will be on face/ left in bowl/ dropped! So they actually eat less

From 6 months with both I basically just gave a chunk of whatever we had. So I would cook a salmon fillet, give them a bit off the end which is about 1/4 at guess. Some days they ate, some days picked and left then just had milk

And spoon of rice I mean literally a teaspoon blob

For the last couple of weeks Ds2 day is

5-6.30 bottle of 6-8oz milk
An hour later 1-2 weetabix with a banana mashed in made with 6oz milk
12-1 cauliflower cheese from a packet (about 6X his fist portion), mixed with 5oz milk and puréed veg. Followed by a jar of egg custard and puréed fruit
5-6 packet of Mediterranean veg and rice, again a full bowl, using half the dried packet with 5oz milk and some puréed veg followed by a petit filous
8 bottle of 6-8oz of milk and sleep till morning.

What I want is to swap the packet stuff with my home made food but he isn't keen.

Mrs - is he only having x2 bottles of milk a day?

Yes, he has reflux and prefers solids. If we offer milk in the day he never takes more than 2oz and then cries for food.

Art phew. Thought I was under feeding mine! Though as I say I offer a bit too much so if she did want more she could.

Lunch was much the same as breakfast. I did a humous sandwich cut into fingers which got poked into the tray of the high chair followed by a lot of 'where's my lunch' crying. So i gave him some of the lentil and sweet pot puree mixed in with a small amount of baby cereal, then surprisingly he had 4oz from a bottle.

Dinner is liver and mash. (Which was always ds1 favourite.)

Maybe he doesn't like bread?

Could you give the butter but squash while in strips and let him dip in the houmous?

And can always give him a dry ish lentil casserole in bowl so he can use spoon or be spoon fed, or can pick lentils up with fingers.

• I meant butternut squash

Definitely try cheese - most kids seem to love it. Hummus in an egg cup? My kids used to love eating hummus with just their fingers ( no bread required!!)
If your older one is eating casserole type meals these can be blitzed up fairly easily with a stick blender & some extra liquid if he seems to prefer smoother food - even chicken will blitz down if mixed up with other stuff. Have you tried pureed cauliflower/broccoli cheese if he likes the packet type a familiar flavour might just persuade him? Also mixing a bit of purees with baby rice might also give a familiar texture if he likes packet cereal based foods.

Mixing sweet potato or carrot in with everything was also a winner in our house (I can't stand the taste of it pureed now though!)
Other finger foods which got a positive response from my fussy eldest were stips of cheesy omlette, eggy bread, slices of hard boiled egg chopped up, quartered grapes (faffy though!) very thinly sliced banana, small cooked pasta shapes.

Good luck - it will pass eventually! My 5 yo is just getting to the stage where he really seems to enjoy his food instead of enduring it!