My Child Doesn't Eat

I was recently reading a post written by Lucy discussing her youngest daughters eating habits; it quickly dawned on me that I could have written the post myself about Florrie.

When it came to weaning, we never had any issues with Aoife and she was fairly easy. I was slightly naive and decided to wean her from 17 weeks, something of which I now know is far too early unless advised to by medical professionals. By 6 months Aoife was enjoying 3 meals a day alongside her normal milk too.

With Florrie, I had decided before she was born that I would go down the baby led weaning route which I knew I wouldn't be able to start until the 6 month mark. I never thought that I would have anything to worry about - Aoife was a brilliant eater, so her sister would be too, right?

The 6 month mark arrived and Florrie flat out refused anything other than her milk; her food would end up everywhere other than in her mouth. Eventually, at almost 7 months old, she ate a 4 month puree from a spoon. After a couple of months we managed to progress onto 7 month purees and some small finger foods.

This didn't last long as a few months ago, Florrie was hit with a persistent nighttime cough which resulted in a lot of vomit every night. I was surviving on about 1 hour of sleep a night and her eating habits regressed dramatically.

Eventually, the doctors decided to treat her with asthma but despite clearing the cough and vomiting up for the most part, her appetite is practically back to the newborn stages. When I enquired this with my health visitor, I was told that as she was gaining weight and had jumped from the 90th to the 95th centile, they were not concerned - this in turn has frustrated me to no end, as I was even told that if she continued to jump centiles, then they would look into restricting her diet. Hearing this was certainly the last thing I needed.

Florrie is now currently 13 and a half months old and around 80% of her food intake is full fat milk. We have had to drop back down to stage 1 puree, occasionally a stage 2; her gag reflex can't seem to take much more than that. I was told by the health visitor that at her age she should only be consuming 1 pint of milk a day - at the moment she is consuming over double this amount with the majority being in the night.

I am keeping everything crossed that this is just a habit that she will grow out of, but I can't help but feel so disheartened by it all. I would love to hear of anyone else who has been or is currently going through this too.