12 month old mealtime stress

[yawnicorn]

My 12mo does not eat very much at all. She’s bf and we’ve done BLW since she was 6 months old. We have tried spoon feeds but she is very easily distracted and the spoon/cup/whatever becomes what she fixates on, and she stops eating to play with that. The maximum amount of time she’ll sit for is about 5 minutes.

She enjoys banana, apple, cucumber and tiny shreds of cheese or pasta, and sometimes toast. Around 50% of the time she won’t try anything at all - she’s just now thrown all her breakfast (toast and fruit) on the floor, and screamed and shouted until I got her out.

Her weight gain has slowed, although we saw the HV last week and she wasn’t concerned (she is very active). My DD still breastfeeds a decent amount but I do make sure I don’t feed her around mealtimes, in the hope she’s hungry enough to get stuck into her food.

How can I encourage her to eat more? I have to eat my own meals quickly because having her sit and scream after a few minutes it’s awful, not to mention all the wasted food.

How often does she bf? At 12 months I would cut back in milk to encourage eating.

Can you give a typical days food, including any snacks op ?

It's normal for weight gain to slow around this age, and also normal for young children to be fussy. Honestly I wouldn't stress over it. Continue to offer her a range of foods and eat together at the table with her if you can.

Also read the book My Child Won't Eat, it's very reassuring.

My twins are picky sometimes but we've tried a few things.
Eating what they are eating at the same time or taking a bite and then giving it to them.
Just keep picking up the food from the floor and give it back to them to keep eating. Sometimes things will hit the floor several times then be shoved in mouth and eaten all up.

My DD went off food at around 11 months and has only recently started eating 3 meals a day for the first time at 16 months. She is bf but didn't really increase her milk intake during this time, and would have no milk while at nursery. She lost a bit of weight but had plenty to lose. Then one day a coupe of weeks ago I just couldn't give her enough food. She still has off days though. I think it coincided with starting nursery, a series of bugs and teething. I would only worry if you are not seeing wet nappies or you see a sudden weight loss.

She has a bf at approximately 5am, 10am, 2pm, and 7pm. And a short dream feed at around 11pm.

That’s a lot of breastfeeding, doubt she needs to eat much!

I’d drop the 10 & 2 and give her a snack instead

If she sat on your knee while you ate your lunch do you think she would be more settled and possibly interested in picking up food off your plate? We did a lot of that with DD, (as well as pretending to feed her toys )

DP aboslutely hated how much food was wasted during weaning but I saw it as it was used whether or not DD actually ate it or not. If she played with the yoghurt and drew patterns with it rather than most of it making it into her mouth then that was fine in my opinion. Gradually bit by bit more and more did go in and she eats really well now at 15mo.

It seems like an issue now but actually, no matter what you do she will start eating meals at some point regardless of what you do or don't do now so just try and make it as stress free on yourself as possible. Keep offering her stuff, if she eats some great, if not just try again the next time.

One thing I would say though is when DD was going through a similar stage of chucking stuff and crying after about 5 mins (around 10-11 months) I didn't attempt to eat all my meals at the same time as her, I would try and have at least one meal a day with her but often I would give her 'lunch' at 11 am and then have mine in peace later on when she was napping.

Thanks everyone
Typical food offer would be:

Breakfast - some kind of buttered toast (with peanut butter, marmite) with fruit (berries, satsuma), or some cereal with fruit

Snack around mid-morning - yoghurt, I sometimes have a bowl of oat granola mid morning so I’ll offer some pieces of that

Lunch - scrambled egg/cheese/beans on toast/chunk of my omelette, or a cream cheese or tuna sandwich, chunks of tomato and cucumber, some cucumber apple, a few crisp snacks, yoghurt

Snack - perhaps toast if we didn’t have it earlier, or some breadsticks and cream cheese/hummus

Dinner - anything we have, so jacket potato, falafel, chunky chips, salad, pie, quiche, veg, pasta

Her nappies are absolutely fine, and she’s a bright and healthy little thing. At the last weigh in she’d only gained an ounce in 6 weeks.

pasta yes I can imagine that would be easier actually, offering her food at a different time to when I eat so I can have some food without her getting flappy and upset after a few moments!