11 month old doesn’t eat much!

[RosieLee2019]

We’ve been doing BLW since DS was 6 months and he’s been quite inconsistent with how much he eats, but generally it’s very small quantities, just a few bites of whatever we’re having.

Occasionally he’ll eat a decent amount but that’s maybe once every few days. Some days, next to nothing.

He’s still breastfeeding on demand and seems to want a lot of milk still. I know milk is his primary source of nutrition til 1 but that’s only a couple of weeks away!

His hasn’t gained much weight in recent months, and has slipped from 75th to 50th centile. He is extremely active but I thought that would mean he’d need to eat more!

Should I be worried??

I would maybe try to reduce the breastfeeding, make it slightly less on demand. My son breastfed until he was 3 but because I went back to work at 6 months he had to go without breastfeeding for quite long stretches. so ate well because he had to as he wouldn't take any bottles of ebm! So a lot of his liquids were in food!
When introducing solids to formula fed babies I think they say to try the food first and then offer a bottle 30 mins later so they're hungrier and therefore will eat better. You could try that.

I'd start trying to reduce the BFing a bit as well. Some are more accepting of this than others though. By 11 months I fed DS on wake up abs before bed abs if he asked for it at other times he could be easily distracted with a snack abs drink. Then DD arrived abs she was a bit more "insistent"

Could you try offering just on wake up, nap times and bedtime and try to make it very unavailable with lots of layers and keeping very busy in between?

*and

I agree with cutting down slightly on the breastfeeding. Can you try to make sure he doesn't have a breastfeed in the couple of hours before a meal, to make sure he's hungry and has a good go at the meal?

I know BLW is great when it works but I do also think there’s nothing wrong with some spoon feeding too. If I just went with BLW with my youngest he’d never eat

Yes, I agree with that too! Will he let you spoon feed him a bit OP?

Thanks all, that makes sense re cutting back on the bf-ing and offering snacks etc instead. I think he just breastfeeds cos it’s there!!

He has started to do a bit better with a preloaded spoon, so not quite spoon feeding him but def giving him a helping hand!