8 month old still not eating , pulling my hair out.

[ruty]

she was never a great milk feeder, takes breast as little as possible, refuses bottle, and has never taken to food. she is very small but quite happy and bright, interested and good pincer action. i wanted to do blw but she panics if any lumps go in her mouth - she gummed a banana but when a small bit went in she started screaming and choking - same thing happened with a rusk. she will sometimes eat a bit of fruit puree - not fresh fruit though. so fo i just try to continue with blw even though everything is rejected? I made a beautiful chicken casserole with carrots tonight and pureed it till it was smooth, and as soon as it went in her mouth she started to scream and choke. is this normal? At my wit's end.

How very stressful! I'm sorry to hear you're having such a bad time.

She has no temperature? Not a sore throat? Mouth ulcer? Nothing that could be interfering with her normal ingestion of food?

I'm certainly no expert but have you tried both on her tray? I mean, both puree and stick food so she can choose? Does she try and eat purees herself? My DD hated me trying to feed her and tried to spoon it in herself. It was everywhere and she didn't get much but at least she wasn't getting shirty and angry with me.

Definitely talk to your HV or doctor too.

I'm sorry not to be of more help.

yes i'll have to go to gp. she' always been like this - she has been ill and had sore throat recently but currently well and happy. it seems to be flavour she objects to - only thing she'll swallow without fuss are those plum fruir purees - the mango one. dread getting her weighed again, she has already steadily dropped from 85th to 25th...

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Lots of sympathy, weaning is a nightmare even when they do want to eat.

The most useful thing I learnt on here was food is fun till one.

She can actually manage on milk till then (although perhaps without enthusiasm)

If you are stressed to the back teeth every meal time, would you consider just stopping and trying again in a couple of months time? Because if you are stressed out at mealtimes she will be.

Just a suggestion, deffo spk to HV/GP as well.

we both got really stressed tonight, it did make me feel like giving up [temporarily] it is just she is so tiny...
do they need an iron supplement if not eating? ds ate everything i gave him, so this is all new to me...

Ruty, when was she 85th centile? And when did she fall?

Because if that was early on it was just catch down growth.

I know how you feel having an older baby not really grow. My DD started between 25-50th, fell to 25th, then fell to 9th at 9 months and fell to just above 2nd at 1. She was ill for a period of time after starting at nursery. It is anxiety provoking, and any comments, from anyone, even with supportive intent, are impossible to hear without wanting to scream I AM TRYING TO FEED HER.

She went on a massive eatathon when one, and is now back to 25th. It really did take until she was one to get the whole idea of eating regularly. She was still waking in the night for milk until just before her first birthday.

You need mealtimes to be calm, happy, non pressurised, or she will get stressed coming to the table.

Can you eat as a family? Put the same things as you are having in front of her. Praise if she reaches out to inspect/play/put to mouth. Ignore if she doesnt do anything with it but eat enthusiastically yourself.

If she is on breast/age appropriate formula she will get enough iron.

And the best things come in small packages! Think of the money you will save on clothes!

Oh, and we did mostly baby led (except yoghurt, or wheetabix. I was not prepared to let her have a go at those!).

So if you want to do that, you really do have to take a deep breath, embrace the philosophy, and LET the baby lead. If she isn't going for it, she doesn't want to that day, that week, that month.

It is utterly mindless, most of your carefully prepared food is on the floor, or in her hair, but she WILL get it.

I would still take her to be looked at though, just in case there is something (ulcer, gum/tooth issue) that is making her not want things in her mouth.

And my baby doesnt like hot, warm, lukewarm or even tepid food. She likes it cold. Disgusting, but thats the way she is.

thanks rempy. I will get her checked, she had a sore throat recently, i hope it isn't persisting. I suspect tho, that she is just ultra fussy, as she has never been interested in food. She seems to choke so easily and retch dramatically when we do blw and she does it repeatedly with the same level of shock and surprise, rather than get used to it! I am a bit worried about the choking issue. Yes she was born on the 85th, and then went down to 50th and then the 25th, over 6 months. I have to summon up the courage to go to get her weighed again, i'm sure she has dropped, and she has been ill for ages. She won't take a bottle of anything now either.

oh you poor thing, ruty, how stressful, but really, if you're worried about her weight then isn't milk better for that? are you bfing, cos if so then from what i've seen on my site it's not uncommon for bf babies (or even babies who just really like their milk) to only start to eat at 9 mos.

yes i'm breastfeeding Aitch [hope it's getting better for you btw]i just wondered if she should be more interested in food by now and not retch so dramatically every time a small lump enters her mouth! interesting about the 9 month thing...

she's not a big bfeeder either, a five minuter..

Sounds v stressful!! Poor you, weaning can be soo stressful, can't it! Just remember that milk has loads more calories than any small amounts of solids she would be eating if she was "a good eater", and fats, and all the vits and minerals too.

I'm not sure about supplements, but I'm doing BLW with my 8 month old dd, and I read in the BLW book by Gill Rapely that babies' stores of iron and so on only deplete very gradually, so according to her, we shouldn't worry too much about iron and so on.

FWIW, my dd used to often scream and gag when I fed her pureed food, which made me really anxious (I did purees for a month before I discovered BLW), and when we started BLW she cried a lot when she bit off a bit of food and it was in her mouth and she didn't know what to do with it, and that made me really anxious too. She gagged at the start too, but now she's fine and eats well. She only eats a total of around 2/3 tablespoons of food, which I imagine isn't as important nutritionally as her milk, so I would say don't worry about the nutritional side of solids just now.

If you did decide to do BLW only, at least that would take the pressure off you both for her to actually eat, because you could just leave the decision of whether to eat completely up to her. Your job as mum would just be to give her a variety of food presented in a suitable way, and it would be her job to eat it. Thinking of it that way really helped me. And because she gets all she needs from milk up until she's around one, you could look at meals as sort of "fun food and eating lessons/experiences" rather than a time to fill her tummy. I'm sure you've heard this before, but thinking of it that way really helped me relax about my dd eating v little.

Plus I've heard and read loads of parents say that their los didn't really eat until they were 10 months old or so, and even then, many seem to not eat much a lot of the time after that. I'm sure it must be stressful, but she won't starve herself! She'll get the hang of eating sooner or later! As others have said, you could take her to the doctors as well, just in case.

thanks pispirapis - yes i must think of more blw foods to give her - i'm trying to keep her dairy and gluten free at present so a bit stuck for foods - she has refused a banana ever since the retching episode! good to know other babies having similar issues...

she sounds quite similar to my ds when he was that age. from birth i struggled to feed him. he showed no interest at all in breast feeding, and yet screamed and arched his back when offered a bottle. his daily milk intake as a baby was half what dd had. in fact, the only milk he seemed to like was whole cows milk. when it came to weaning, he refused to eat from a spoon until at least 8 months. i remember my mum didn't believe me about the problems i was having feeding him until she gave it a go and had to admit defeat. she tried to force the spoon in and he sprayed it everywhere.

thinking back, i remember just saying to myself at the time that the age guidelines for weaning are just that, guidelines. each child will take solid food when they are good and ready. when ds finally did, he very quickly went from puree's to more or less baby led weaning in about a week. and now, he's still the same about food, he eats very little, he's small for his age but he's very happy and healthy.

she maybe just (just?) has a very sensitive gag reflex, and it'll take time to go. there was a woman on my site who's baby vommed every time he was given anything until he was 9 mos and then bingo, he got over it. weird.

Also, when my DS was about the same age, he wasn't mad on food either. But I gave him Abidec, that vitamin supplement because I was worried like you, and his appetite definitely improved.

Good luck! If she's got milk, she's not going to starve, not with a caring, attentive mum like you around!

thanks for the replies, I'll just try to keep persevering - it is funny how she seems driven by taste - sweet fruity flavours only - she woke up with eczema around her chin this morning, that's new, maybe a reaction to food, i don't know.

I have a not disimilar experience - my DD is 8.5 months now and BLW. From birth she has not been a big BF'er (she is demand EBF) and very fast - really a feed takes 5 minutes, only 15 even when she was a newborn. She was born 25th centile and since 4 months has been dropping steadily so she is now just 0.4th centile. Her height is fine. I have been given rubbish advice, consistently, from HV - wean her at 4 months, try and get her off of BF on to formula etc etc. She refuses a bottle despite us trying since 8 weeks. Since starting BLW at 6 months she has had the odd week here and there when she eats a reasonable amount but generally she just pushes it around or puts it in her mouth but spits it out again. I give her certain foods on a spoon, i.e. yogurt, porridge, soup and she takes the spoon from me and will eat those herself some days quite a lot really. Despite being so small she is very active and has hit all her milestones early, i.e. crawling at 5.5 months, pulling up to stand at 6, cruising at 7.5, so she isn't lacking in strength or energy. I just realised this thread is pretty old - how did your story pan out Ruty? Did perserverence with BLW work and at what age?