7 months old still tongue thrusting, spitting all food out.

[ruty]

Am at a bit of a loss, as ds ate everything put in front of him. DD, 7 months, has never wanted much milk, is breastfed, have tried everything to get more milk into her, have just had to settle on the fact that she isn't very hungry. She was born on the 80th centile, then dropped ot 50th, now on 25th. Is this ok? She gets upset if i try to spoon feed her, will suck on a banana but not eat any of it. I have tried her on baby rice with breast milk and a bit of fruit puree. Both is spat out routinely and she cries. Any tips?

My only tip is don't get stressed. My daughter wouldn't eat at that age, either. I'd just offer her finger foods until she starts to get interested. Your HV might say that the fact that she's dropping centiles is bad, but as long as she is still consistently gaining weight, even if it's not a lot, she should be okay, I think. My little girl was born on 75, dropped to 9, and then went up to the very top, so they can fluctuate, I think.

thanks MoChan. It is stressful, worrying about her not eating anything, time consuming too! Poor old ds has to do a lot of waiting around. I just hope she's getting enough and will finally want to eat at some point.

oh don't worry

My dd1 (dc2) did this till she was over 8mo and she couldn't hold things so finger food was totally out.

She has always been a slow developer. She started eating after 8mo, could hold things at about 10mo, never rolled or crawled, she bum shuffled at a year and walked at 20mo. She only started talking after she could walk!

She started on 50th centile, was on 25th at a year, 9th at 2yr and now at 2.5 she's on th 2nd. She's perfectly healthy.

she grabs things all the time, perhaps i should try more blw stuff. just doesn't seem to like food at all. And she is so little.

Honestly, don't worry. Just offer her small amounts of as wide a variety of stuff as you can, and eventually she'll decide that she likes something.

My little girl always cried when I tried to spoon feed her, which is why I said that you should just offer finger foods and see what she does. When my daughter did eat around that age, the sort of thing she would have a go at were slices of avocado, soft roasted vegetables (sweet potato, butternut squash, potato, parsnip), and steamed courgettes or carrots.

Don't spend too much time on it, though, because it is just dispiriting. She'll get there!

ruty if i were you i would go down the blw route. give her the control to eat when she is ready. I started doing blw with ds, stressed out when he was 7 months old and still hadn't eaten a crumb. Gave him some puree and realised he still had the tongue thrust. So that would be why he hadn't bothered with the BLW either - clever little thing knew he wasn't ready!! I think he ate his first piece of food at just over 8 months.

Ruty, DS has only just really been bothered with food at 7 1/2 months.
If she isn't interested then don't worry, just keep offering.
I'd do BLW too, then you know if they want it, my best with my not very hungry Ds is avocado and cream cheese on diagonal slices of cucumber.
If you're desperately worried you could always ask the doc for iron supplements.

AS an aside, should we arrange another meet soon? Was thinking maybe a xmas lunch for the lot of us or something?

Ruty, one of my DTs is much the same. 28w, has been on solids for a fortnight and I'd say I've got no more than 2/3 teaspoons of puree in - it comes straight out. She is, however, happy to suck on toast fingers, broccoli and rice cakes. Certainly not getting much in the form of nutrition and breastfeeding as much as usual but at least making moves towards 'eating' something. Need more suggestions for finger foods and would really really like her to eat from a spoon cos I don't really have time to put different meals up for them at this age . Shall watch this thread with interest.

Millie1 - Will your eating from a spoon DT also eat finger food? If so I would be inclined to go down that route so you don't have to a) cook 2 different meals and b) try and persuade the other DT to eat off a spoon.

thanks for all the advice. for a long time, ans still occasionally, she choked on breast milk from breast or bottle, so reason i haven't done blw yet is that i'm scared of her choking. must do a bit more homework on it,. will try banana and avocado - so hard to get a ripe avocado! What else is good as finger food?

Hi VS, yes another meet up sounds good! We've all been so ill in our house, dd, was scarily ill for a week, i guess it is a whole new ball game when you have an older child at school/nursery...

I've done a thread in local, Ruty.

It's very rare for a BLW baby to choke. They will often gag but when it happens you need to remain calm and tell yourself this is not choking this is not choking. this video will show you how they sort it out fine for themselves.

thanks nappyaddict - i couldn't get that link to play for some reason. But have tried her with chunks [is that right?] of banana today, which she put to her lips but didn't actually eat. Oh well. She had a couple of spoonfuls of baby rice too. Is now sucking the empty spoon happily!

don't know why it didn't work! if you go on you tube and search for jj gagging it should come up.

If she is putting things to her lips her actually putting them into her mouth won't be far behind. This is exactly how DS was in the beginning.