Finding weaning really hard

[Milly899]

Hiya, FTM and struggling a bit with weaning my 7 month old, I started at 6 months.
Trying to do a mix of purée/spoon feeding with BLW.
She is happy for me to spoon feed her mostly, been giving her purée and now moving onto more chunky textures. She’s happy until she wants the spoon and then refuses to eat, so I give her the spoon while trying to feed her with another spoon I’m holding and she gets frustrated and won’t feed off my one anyway and then it all ends in tears.

I offer finger foods at every meal but she just waves them around or smashes them into the table.

I’ve tried putting food on table and she either smashes it or stares at it, even if I try to encourage her to put it in her mouth. I eat at the same time but this doesn’t make a difference.

she has no issue putting her toys in her mouth, why won’t she with food?

DS is the same, he’s 7 months and doing a mix of purée and finger food. He also just wants to hold and chew on the spoon so I give him a spoon and I have one like you do.

Have you tried giving her the finger food straight into her hand? I found that if it’s on his high chair tray he’s not really that interested in it but if I put it directly into his hand he lifts it to his mouth and starts chomping on it. It usually ends up being dropped and on the floor but he is getting the hang of lifting the food to his mouth.

I’m also a FTM so can’t offer much more advice but all the best!!

It's totally normal at 7 months. I was honestly worried sick at one point when my baby hardly ate anything at all at that age. And then 8 months and then 9 months and 10 months hardly any eating. Then 11 months it's like a switch flicked! And now he's over 1 years old and he's loving food and actually eating because he's hungry.
Please don't worry , your baby will get it, it's just a very slow process. Some babies pick it up straight away and others take a lot longer.

Just keep offering food to her, either by spoon or blw, and let her eat what and when she likes. And carry on letting her see you enjoy your food.

Don't fall into the trap of 'getting' her to eat this early. You don't get her to eat, she chooses what and when to eat, that's how she learns appetite regulation.

Literally every child eats eventually.

Your only job is to offer her healthy nutritious food. It's her job to choose and learn to eat.

Also, up to you obvs, but I'd avoid too much sweet stuff for a few years so she can get accustomed to all kinds of different tastes and textures.

Honestly, this is absolutely fine. I did traditional weaning (purées and fingers foods) with my first and BLW with the next three dc. At this age, they do just okay with food and that’s absolutely fine. Food is for fun til the age of one. One of mine ate very little until they were about 15 months.

Honestly, at this age it’s just about tasting different foods and the nutrition is coming from milk. It sounds like you’re putting yourself under lots of pressure. You could try backing off and just giving dc a few bits from your plate or some chopped veggies etc and letting them play with it?