Hello,
The title pretty much says it in a nutshell, and I need some advice as to how I should proceed. DS is a week shy of 6 months, but has been showing signs of being "ready" for the transition to solids for several weeks now. He's really curious as to what the rest of the family is putting in their mouths, he no longer has his tongue thrust reflex, etc. Furthermore, he's a big boy - over 8kg at last weigh in about 2 weeks ago. He's also a refluxer (which is luckily beginning to show signs of improvement). At the moment he's on 5 bottles (FF) per 24 hours (includes a dream feed) and a total of around 900ml. I also wanted to start weaning the DF because he really seems as though he doesn't need it. For the past two or three weeks he's been taking ages to finish it, if at all, and we've already reduced it in quantity and added that amount to his daytime feeds. But I wanted to wait until he was at least starting with his solids, just so he has something a little more substantial in his tummy, even if it's only a tiny amount.
We first tried some very runny baby rice about a month ago, then runny pears, and we've been trying about once a week ever since. Every time we try he seems eager, which is always encouraging and I make sure I'm eating something at the same time. I barely coat the spoon with the food, then the spoon touches his lips and he makes a face. But he carries on and takes the food into his mouth and as soon as he does that he gags and dry wretches. So then we take a break for several days and we try again, but to no avail. I obviously don't want him to associate the spoon with the unpleasant sensation of dry wretching, and he's not strong enough to hold himself up in a high chair, so we can't do BLW yet. The funny thing is that he's been taking his reflux meds since he was 2 months old, which is in gel form and is even thicker than the baby rice and pears we've been trying. He takes is from a plastic syringe, and I squirt just a little onto his tongue and he swallows it down without a problem. DH says we should maybe try some solids with the syringe, just to see how it goes. But I don't know if it's a good idea to go down that path, which is not particularly "normal".
I know that solids are just experimental and for fun at the moment, but if we can't get past this dry wretching thing I can't see now we're ever going to more forward. Any advice would be really appreciated.
Thanks in advance!
