Struggling with weaning my 8 month old

[disneymad85]

Hi MN

I have an 8 month old little girl. We have been attempting weaning since she was 6 months old with a mixture of purées and BLW.

I am starting to get worried as we are having very little success. It's really difficult to get her to accept purées from a spoon and generally can only be achieved by using some sort of distraction (ie my DP doing some sort of dance with her toys). With the BLW she generally plays with the food but doesn't really eat very much of it (a few crumbs at most).

I am also worried that she is dropping her milk despite not eating very much. She is a big baby (95th centile) and used to have up to 40oz.

Today as an example she has had 27oz and around 6 baby spoons of fruit at breakfast, she nibbled on a baby rice cake and a baby biscuit at lunch but most of it went on the floor and for dinner had around 4 baby spoons of fruit puree.

Has any one experienced this and do you have any advice? Also do you think her milk intake is too low considering what she has eaten today which to me seems very little?

She is my first so I'm getting worried and stressed. I know she has plenty of fat reserves so won't starve but I want to make sure she is getting what she needs.

Thank you in advance

Don’t stress! The more you worry, the more baby will pick up on it and mealtimes become fraught.

Dd didn’t eat much of anything until she was past 1. She was absolutely fine and doesn’t stop eating now.

Give up purées if she won’t eat them, distracting baby to eat is never a good idea. Give her a spoon and let her stick her hands in and lick it off etc.

Around that age 24-36 ozs of milk in a 24 hour period is fine, even with minimal food. She won’t starve herself, promise.

I’d cut out all the processed baby food, and concentrate on giving her real, nutritionally dense food like avocado, peanut butter, proper porridge, eggs, fresh leafy veg, roasted veg, fish etc etc. That when what little she eats will be much better for her than a biscuit. Good luck! It does click eventually.

Thank you for your help and reassurance. It can be so disheartening when you see other babies of the same age wolfing down meals!

That's good to know about the milk, I just assumed that she would still be drinking as much as she isn't eating much but I will try and relax and let her do her thing!