6 mo hates my cooking!!!

[Mooles]

I've been weaning my 6mo DS for about 4 weeks and he appears to be repulsed by anything I cook / prepare myself (thanks Annabel Karmel!) - yet will wolf down Ella's Kitchen pouches, baby yogurt, baby porridge and now jars of Hipp Organic variations on chicken. As well as numerous fruit / veg purees I've tried fish with sweet potato, fruity chicken casserole, cauliflower cheese but they all produce the same disgusted expression and a clamping shut of the mouth. Any idea what I've done / am doing wrong?!

you probably just to put a lot less effort in.

put some buttered toast out for him to have a go at. or chop up some big pieces of fruit and veg and let him have a go. no need to be making special things.

No cunning suggestions, but my little monster did this after having loved AK purees for 2 weeks, and would only eat jar food.

I think they recognise the jars. Maybe they taste more bland. You could try decanting your food into a jar to see, although that sounds a bit of a faff!

Hopefully the next poster will have excellent advice as the how to fix this.

I had this, as did some friends. I think it is a combination of blandness but maybe also texture. Commercial foods are very very smooth, esp the early stage ones. Anything home-made, even pureed, is slightly more lumpy, you just can't get them that smooth yourself.

Would def try and include some finger food, toast, fruit, etc to make sure he gets some texture and gets used to lumps. It can be a real problem weaning them off these very very smooth foods later on.

Have you been on any of the BLW forums? I didn't do this, but saw friends who did and it definitely seemed the way forward!!

Good luck

As it happens, on the advice of my HV I gave him buttered toast at lunch today after he spat out my lovingly prepared cauli cheese - he seemed very intrigued and sucked hard on it to the point where he gagged, I panicked and had him virtually upside down slapping his back, but the little tinker was fine of course....
This isn't as easy as I thought it would be! I thought he'd love his food like his mummy does! And all this after having spent the past 6 months stressing about no sleep, now I'm stressing about no sleep AND food.
Thanks for all your posts, great to see I'm not alone (all my friends' babies seem to love their mum's food..) and may try the decanting trick..

no.

stop.

...breathe.

if you make a huge deal out of this you will have a miserable time. gagging is good, it's how they clear stuff when it goes too far back. as you observed, he was fine.

what do YOU eat? what's your favourite food? any reason why he can't have that?

aitch you are wise and you got here before me

Mooles, please don't go there. I love food. I spent 12 months trying to convince my DCs to feel the same, getting so upset and stressed about the whole feeding/mealtimes thing, it was awful and a waste of my life. And no-one really enjoyed it. Even now (at 2.3yo) they just see food as a fuel to play some more. I guess that's inevitable. They hate variety so I mostly give them food they know and like, makes it much less stressful.

Gagging is normal, just let them carry on with different bits of food, but stay nearby in case it happens again.

I would say, try not to cook separate meals if you can help it - for me that made the rejection of it much more emotional and depressing. If I had just given them our leftovers then wouldn't have been as fussed. And apparently I was a terrible fussy eater, but now I adore food and eating, so something must have changed!

Good luck

Our food is always pretty heavily seasoned which is what's put me off mashing it up and giving it to him...HV reckons that by 8mo he'll be able to tolerate some salt but I'm still uneasy about that..
I do need to chill out, I know

yes yes to leftovers
if you eat proper food they're best way to feed a baby IMO

and I would say ditch the jars - as other posters suggest they will make your life harder in the long run

cook what you cook, take out a portion for him, season what's left. no need to mash even. keep it really easy. minimal effort.

what sort of things do you cook?

Hm, stir fries, Thai curries, shepherd's pies, spag bol or lasagne, roast dinners, fish and chips, Indian curries, pasta with chicken or salmon or prawns and veggies - I guess some of these things could work for him....I guess it's got to be worth a try before he becomes too addicted to the damn jars. I don't like him not to have a decent sized meal as I relate it all back to sleep (full baby = better sleep, though I know it doesn't always follow..) so when he rejects my food I end up cracking open a pouch or jar just so he eats something.
Thanks again for posts and advice all.

a baby that age gets full from milk, tbh, so keep concentrating on that if you're concerned about sleep etc.

stir fries yum yum, he can deffo have that. say for example a lemony or limey chilli thing with soy sauce, just remove a portion and it can cool while you add chilli and soy. (although my kids ate soy sauce, i just rinsed it undder the tap if i thought there was heaps, which also cools down the food so everyone's a winner.

Thai curries
probably not, so give him something else that night. probably pasta and pesto and peas, if mine are anything to go by.

shepherd's pies
no probs, just put it out on the tray and let him get stuck in.

spag bol
yes please, deffo. although we have got used to eating bol with fusilli as it's easier for wee babies to pick up.

lasagne,
okay, so long as you don't mind the mess.

roast dinners
easy, just don't smother with gravy

fish and chips
super easy and peas are great fun once they get their pincer grip

Indian curries
you can make v mild curries or add lots of yog, but that's something me and dh have on a night when we're not eating together.

pasta with chicken or salmon or prawns and veggies
yum yum

you were BORN to BLW, judging by that diet.

just get used to adding salt at the table rather than the cooking process, and you'll be fine. and use wine and herbs more and stock cubes less. (although imo if you're cooking from scratch you'll be fine because you'll be aware of these things going in. it's when people eat a lot of processed foods that the salt levels explode).

[bows to aitch]

and if you use the Knorr liquid stocks ('touch of taste' they're called) the salt level is much lower than eg Oxo or Bisto and they are delicious

I wouldn't eat fish with sweet potato, or fruity chicken cassarole, it sounds gross. Feed him normally, he's not a different species! Give him pasta with cheese sauce, toast with butter, egg fried rice, steamed broccoli, fish WITHOUT mad bits of sweet potato (which does Not, by the way, go with fish!)

Ha! Brilliant, that's really made me laugh. Who the heck is this Annabel Karmel anyway, what does she know!
I feed DS at 5.30ish and we don't eat till after his bedtime but I guess I can save portions until the following day. Aitch (thanks so much for advice) - are you suggestion a type of BLW thing where he just figures out himself out to eat? Or mash / chop finely?

lol, fish with sweet potato does sound absolutely bogging, i must agree.

remember when whomoved's hv noted disapprovingly in her red book that she was feeding her child with 'human foods'? lol

it is so interesting, isn't it, mooles, that people consider themselves lovers of food (like you and me, in fact i love it a leeeeetle too much ) but when it comes to feeding their small babies they're reliant on strange pureed recipes and jars? bonkers, really. but that's marketing for you, we're all informed by it, no matter what we do.

good to know about those stock things, mrsb. some people recommend the kallo lo-salt ones but they're so jammy and weird i'd rather go without, tbh.

i like BLW, myself. that's my site i referred you to earlier. but do what YOU want to do, whatever's most convenient and makes your boy happiest.

this is annabel karmel, btw well worth a read, that...

If you do want to go the puree route, just puree/pulse/mas what you are eating - shepherds pie, bolognese. Home cooked food is far more calorie dense than jars so don't expect him to eat as much home cooked as jars. Ban the jars definitely don't use as back up if does't eat home cooked food.

Agreed...the annoying thing is I started off full of good intentions and have a full freezer to show for it, but since starting weaning we went on holiday and not fancying spending the whole time cooking and pureeing I took a few sachets with us....think it must have been my downfall as prior to that he had been (reluctantly, it has to be said) eating my purees.

Human food - that is classic!

you can always pop the cubes out into a biiiiiig pan and call it soup. mmmmmm fish and sweet potato soup. [sluuuurp]

You have some amazing advice from Aitch there, I really wish I had come on here 18 mths ago, would have saved myself a whole load of stress.

I can also recommend Waitrose 'cooks ingredients' stock range, they come in a pouch of liquid, but are long(ish)life and the chicken and beef ones have no added salt. They are really delicious, almost as good as making your own. Quite expensive but an excellent base for a soup or something everyone can enjoy.

Last year I made loads of butternut squash soup - its a Gordon Ramsay recipe with chopped spaghetti in it - v delicious and suitable for kids. Just add the chili after their portion comes out! Thick soups are good all round, easy to eat but 'human food'

Good luck, let us know how you get on.

Have just read that AK link - OMG! She cooked 4 different meals a night for her son to choose??? Surely totally against her book's philosophy.
Am also a bit about her son's wife being able to do the cooking. Why not him? Hmmmph.

lol, it's an AMAZING article, isn't it? and the spoilt lad doesn't know how to roast a sodding chicken...

Nooooo! I started to read it but got distracted by DS so will try and find time while he naps later! Always a relief to find that those supermums ain't so super after all
Tried toast fingers last night again and again, gagging ... I know it's normal but it scares the pants off me!! How long does it take them to figure out how to chew and swallow...?
Penona, thanks so much for the stock advice -and I'm always looking for excuses to go to Waitrose so that works

Aitch thanks for the post with all the ideas!

Mooles as everyone has said don't worry if your LO doesn't eat much - mine is now 9 months and has only recently started to see food as fuel rather than fun toys. He still has off meals when he won't eat because of tiredness etc and then other meals where he wolfs down everything.