Hi everyone
I have a little boy, who is 8 months old. I am after some advice/reassurance etc. as a FTM. I feel like my baby should be consuming more food at this age?
We started weaning at 6 months and we have taken it slow really. He was doing fine, and seems to have been developing fine with his gagging, moving to chewing etc. He seemed to take to finger foods well, and eating off as spoon. He loves drinking water out of his little open cup.
Some days it would be hit and miss with how much he would consume. We would have a good day where he would really chew on his finger food, or take a lot of puree, and others not so much but because we had just started I believed this was fine.
However, the past week or so he is barely eating much each meal. I am trying to get in a rhythm of offering him 3 meals a day because he is eating so little at each one I am trying to increase the opportunities for him to eat (if that makes sense).
I feel that sometimes it is because he isn't hungry, or just not in the mood, which is fine but then he is not eating even one good meal at the minute. He is probably consuming 2-3 teaspoons over the day this week.
A week or so ago I decided to try different techniques to see what works best (offer finger food and puree on a spoon). At the minute he will not take any food from me, and wants to feed himself but basically has a mouthful before repeatedly throwing the spoon on the floor or just eating the other end of the spoon.
I am getting really disheartened tbh, because I am offering food three times a day, which obviously takes time to prep and because he is feeding himself the food ends up everywhere, which takes me time to clean up. Doing this 3x a day is so time consuming.
Is this normal? At what point should I get concerned? Is there anything I can do differently?
Food wise a typical day is something like:
BF: porridge/toast
lunch: egg & avo / food sachet
dinner: either some finger food of what we are having (meat/veg etc) or food sachet / fruit
He currently has 30+ oz of milk a day.
He seems to have found a rhythm of 4 bottles between 7-7ish. He goes to bed absolutely fine at 7pmish, wakes up 6/6.30ish. Most nights he has 2x bottles in the night (3-5oz ish). Last night it was 23:30, and 02:30, but there isn't much of a pattern to his night wakings really. Obviously, I would love to get it down to consistently one bottle a night (if not 0), but I am sure he'll get there on his own. He is a screamer, and when i have dabbled with letting him CIO, he gets far too upset.
The other thing that I would really like some advice on, is our mornings. He never seems to want milk when he wakes up. He always starts his bottle at least an hour after he has started the day. He takes half of it, and then the other half 50 mins-1 hour. He then normally goes down for his first nap.
This is common for his day bottles. He will have half his bottle (4oz), after 4 hours, and then the other half (4oz) 50 mins later. Again, it would make life much easier if he would eat it in one go.
So, because of this, I have tried for the past few days to offer him breakfast before his bottle, but he still isn't taking it. Otherwise he wouldn't be having breakfast until after nap.
We generally follow 234 wake windows, which have been working well (although not well enough to stop eating/waking at night). He naps 2.5-3 hours a day. Normally a 2 hour nap, and a 1 hour nap.
Thank you so much! All thoughs/advice welcome :)