No solid food 12 months

[Lottie81]

Hello. My daughter is about to turn 12 months old and is still 100% breastfed. She will not take a bottle or eat solid foods. She very rarely puts anything in her mouth, even fingers or toys! She will happily play with food and now and again she licks something.

She is behind her peers physically i.e not crawling but can rock on all fours. She makes sounds like; bababa, dadada and mamama, giggles, plays peek a boo etc....and although I feel she is a little behind the health visitor and language therapist think her development is perfectly fine.

She has been assessed by a facial surgeon and he does not think a tongue tie is an issue. She just isn't interested to the point of being suspicious of anything other that breastfeeding.

We are so, so worried and nobody seems to be able to offer any advice or knows what to do. We let her play with food everyday but do not force spoon feeding because it just makes her upset and we are trying to build trust around the dinner table.

Any advice greatly received. Thank you

My son was the same, I think I wrote a few threads about it. It drove me mad. We were in hospital with him for about a week at 9m and the consultant was concerned, but I think she thought it was more that I wasn't trying hard enough. She recommended messy play.

My son doesn't like getting his hands dirty so BLW and messy play didn't work. He didn't and still doesn't put stuff in his mouth like toys/teething. I've never see him do it once!

Now onto what I think might of maybe helped a tiny bit was getting rid of everything about meal times and the rigidity of it all. High chairs/bibs/meal times/fancy homemade foods that took ages to make/watching him eat/encouraging him to eat. I'd literally get a couple of bits of toast/bread/breadsticks/bagels/cucumber/tomato and put them on a plate and leave them near his toys for him to get if he wanted, I wouldn't really even offer them to him or watch him if he was interested. It was like a picnic except I tried to make it really not a big deal or interactive (sounds mean but he'd get stressed and so would I). I didn't do breakfast/lunch/tea I just put stuff out when I had a minute.

I felt so stressed with the food/money waste & also other people thinking it's my food/my cooking he didn't like and 'had I tried making their recipe of stew, apple crumble, cottage pie' blah! Once I did the picnic style I relaxed a lot as I wasn't spending ages cooking/prepping. He had his first mouthful at 11m, he's 20m now and is still hard to please so I just give him the same kind of meals rotated over a 4 days period. Looking back I think he prefers waiting until he can do something perfectly before even trying. Sitting/walking/eating/speaking have all gone this way so far. Still waiting on the language one but I'm confident he'll get there. You're baby will get there when they're ready, some kids take so much longer than others but I think it's more an indication of a stubborn personality than anything more sinister.

My son never crawled, he bum shuffled and walked at 18m, he didn't roll over until he was over 1. Since he's started walking he's come on along way in his eating & the way he is out of the house. I feel he's gained a lot more confidence so try not to worry too much about milestones etc, I know it's hard not to join up the dots with certain things so you have my sympathies. Just try relax & stay calm.