Solids a no-no!

My 7 month old daughter is uninterested in solids. She'll chew on the odd bit of finger food but clamps her mouth shut at the sight of a spoon. The best eating so far has been when she was with a slightly older baby and she ate some banana when she saw her little friend eating.

I don't want to start force feeding her, but am running out of ideas for finger foods that I can try. I'm giving her roast veg sticks, apples, pears, rusks, bread, toast and, today, a bit of cheese. She's not really eating any of it! Plunket have suggested more variety but I'm not sure what else I can try that's age appropriate.

Any suggestions please???
I'm keen to get her eating something as her weight gains have always been pretty low, so I don't want her wasting away

At that age milk is still the most important thing and is until they're 1yr. Milk is also the most calorific and nutritious thing they can get - much more so than any solids.
Don't worry too much, just give her plenty of opportunity to try things and try not to analyse how much is actually going in. She won't allow herself to starve.

DS eats like a pig one day and a bird the next and I just try to go with the flow. We've always made mealtimes fun and stress-free and totally led by him. Every month he seems to be more and more interested.

There is heaps going on when they start eating solids, so even if she isn't eating heaps, she's learning the skills she needs down the track when she will be eating more - chewing, swallowing etc.

Oh, and you don't need to spoon feed her - have you tried giving her a preloaded spoon and she feed herself? It's messy but DS loves it and was already able to scoop the spoon and feed himself at 10mths. Porridge is good for this as it kinda sticks to the spoon. We have porridge most mornings with some pureed fruit...

oh just thought I would clarify that I could never imagine trying to chew thru solid/finger food with no or little teeth, hence my resoning for not giving it to my DD

and I always made the veges very runny, boiled up in pot with mince or chicken breast cut up then use the water you drain off the pot to add to the blender to make it very whipped up almost soupy but not hard lumpy mash to begin with.

hope that this makes sense

Jaune wrote: She won't allow herself to starve.

This will be my new mantra when I start worrying about her weight gain!

DD doesn't have any teeth and she munches on food with the best of them. I found DD ate better when we sat down together as a family.

At that age it was just her and I and I'd make up weetbix for me and baby muesli for her and we'd eat together.

Lunch was much the same, I ate a lot of soup - left it thick for DD and slightly more stock to my portion.

She still has moments where she's not interested in food she's getting nutrition from breast milk - solids are a supplement to it at that age not a replacement.

I always remember mrsmojo saying "Food is for fun, until they are 1"

Like the others said just keep offering her finger foods and let her try a bit of what you're eating. Tom was exactly the same- wasn't at all interested in eating and when I tried feeing him with a spoon he would just push it away and it was like he didn't know what to do with it. It wasn't until he was 12mths that he started to become interested in food and now at 17 mths is a pretty good eater and will actually beg food off strangers

 

I don't think the number of teeth has much to do with it- Tom's only got 8 teeth and I have seen lots of babies with not very many teeth nibble/suck away on finger foods and consume a decent amount.

As long as she is still having milk I wouldn't worry. Ds eating has only just taken off in the last mo th ( he's 20 mnths). Until then he had mostly bm and he is just fine. I'd take wht Plunket say about food with a grain of salt too. Not all babies can be squished into their box

My mum says that dinner times are one of the few times that kids can exercise control and WIN!!
Doesn't take them long to work it out
We had some success with a carrot puree soaked Cruskitt. Will plod on...