Hi there.
There may be a few things going on here but first off, none of these things are major problems, he is still young and what he is eating now is not a true reflection on what he is going to eat when he is older. Try not to worry and please don't think you did something wrong - so long as your baby is offered food (milk, healthy solids) at predictable times and is gaining weight you really haven't done anything wrong. "wrong" would be feeding him chocolate and sweets or sugary drinks which I am pretty sure you are not doing.
Do you always feed to sleep? I'm just thinking he may be taking more milk at night than is truly needed (due to either habit or sleep prop) meaning he is not so hungry in the day for his BFs and solids meals. What do you think? If you think this is the case it may be worth looking to drop one of those night feeds and moving the majority (or all) of his calorie intake to the day time hours.
Along these same lines, it would be totally normal for a baby this age to have 4 full milk feeds per day (day time). Looking at your routine it seems there is one good feed at WU then 2 which may only be partial feeds before nap (if he is going to sleep on the breast he is perhaps not taking a full feed) and a BF at BT which may be a full feed but again he may be falling to sleep before he is properly full. I think I'd focus first on moving his calorie intake to the day rather than worrying too much about the solids.
A few things you've mentioned WRT solids:
- texture, not wanting wet foods unless spoon fed by you
- use of cutlery
- throwing/dropping food from his plate
- the running buffet
One of the things which could be linking all these difficulties you are having is lack of appetite. If he is not hungry enough for solids he will be more picky about what he chooses to eat, refusing until you place something really yummy in front of him. If he was properly hungry he would be more interested in getting food in his mouth than dropping it to the floor, be more inclined to self feed with or without cutlery and more inclined to try new foods or at least the foods you know he already likes.
This comes back to moving the calories from night to day.
Texture
Many people still spoon feed their LOs at this age, with LO not taking over the spoon feeding until around 12 months, it's actually a difficult skill to use a spoon and requires quite a degree of fine motor and bending/twisting of the wrist which he may just not be capable of doing proficiently yet, if he can do it a little it may still be too difficult to do regularly. Whilst I wouldn't go along the lines of pandering to his every whim on food preferences I do think it's fine to offer things within his basic preferences. Mine also did not have much liking for wet foods, and certainly nothing mashed or watery such as soup, however this didn't give me much of a problem as I adapted meals slightly for his needs/preference. EG home made soup I served up 'chunks' of the soup prior to whizzing, DS got the chunks with no liquid, the family ate the blended soup. Home made stews I did the same, serving up chunks of drained meat and veggies without the 'gravy' so it was a slightly drier meal (and in all meals I chopped the veggies larger than I might otherwise to give him a decent chance of gripping the food). Mashed potatoes I dished out some plain boiled potato for DS prior to mashing the rest for the family. This way LO gets the taste for the family meals and the range of healthy foods you are preparing without too much additional work for you but also meeting his needs.
Cutlery
Along with the above (he can eat chunks with his fingers) maybe try a fork instead. From 6 months I used a small plastic fork for my DS, I pre-loaded the fork stabbing the food and either left the fork on his tray or handed it to him to self feed. Probably by this age he was using a child's metal fork, I don't remember if he was stabbing by himself yet though. I wouldn't worry about that, pre-loading a fork is fine. If you are worried about him stabbing himself you can hang on to the end of the fork, allowing him to control the fork but just making sure he doesn't stab his eye! I do think a fork is easier to manipulate as the food stays on it where it just falls off a spoon if you get the angle wrong.
It's also fine to continue to eat without cutlery, using fingers. Your LO may do a mixture of both, agreeing to the pre-loaded fork for more slippery foods which are more difficult to grip in the hand, and continuing to use his fingers for the drier foods he can pick up easily. Remind yourself that using fingers is great fine motor practice so he is still developing skills even without cutlery.
Throwing/dropping food
This is something you will need to teach him is not ok. From his point of view he is just learning more about the world around him, what does this feel like? What happens when I drop it? Does it clatter to the floor or does is splat? What happens when I squeeze it up? Is it solid or does it turn to mush? ...all absolutely normal developmental experiments it's just that you don't want him to explore these things at the dinner table. A few things you can put in place:
- only put 1 or 2 pieces of food on his tray at a time. You can position a plate of food out of reach, let him know it's his, when he eats his first piece you replace with another (this also means if he doesn't eat it, he has not touched it and you may save it for another time)
- give plenty of opportunity in A time to explore physical properties of items, various textures, weights, show him how things are dropped and picked up, sounds they make etc. (then don't allow dropping food at the table)
- ignore dropped food, wait until the end of the meal before you pick up, otherwise he has a cause and effect game started which he may find great fun, I drop this, mummy picks up, I drop again, mummy picks up again (again this is a great game but not at meal time, introduce cause and effect games in A time)
- be vigilant and catch that food before it is dropped. If you are fast, and gentle, you can grab his hand before the drop occurs. Say "food is for eating or clearing up if you don't want to eat it clear up please". Guide his hand back to the tray for him to drop it there or let him drop it in your hand ("give it to me if you don't want it, thank you"), or remove it from his hand and place it back on the tray. If he attempts to drop the same piece again remove that piece from reach, if there is a different food prepared (on his plate) offer a piece of that. If it continues more than a couple of times he is not hungry just say "OK, you're finished, lets clear up" tidy the food, wipe him down and lift him from the high chair. I used to have a second bowl or plate ready to 'catch' the food as it was about to be dropped and say "clear up" the food dropped in, "Thank you, that's tidy" big smiles. This way you reinforce something positive and he learns some key words.
- In fact this is a great time to repeat key words, hungry, food, drink, finished, clear up, and he will likely enjoy this aspect of happy communication with you and get more out of it than the lack of response he gets for dropping food to the floor. At the end of a meal he can help to clear up all the bits on his tray back into the clear up bowl/plate and get big smiles and thanks from you for his help - this is a more cooperative and happier version of his cause and effect experiments.
- If cutlery is dropped or accidentally dropped for the next meal prepare 2 or 3 forks by you (out of his reach). 2 forks can be handy for pre-loading and self feeding anyway.
- You will one day be able to put a full plate of food before him and him not drop it all to the ground, that's just going to take some time and practice and for him to pass this stage of experimentation. He is still very young. It will come with your gentle guidance and consistency.
The running buffet
You are the parent. You decide what is a healthy meal, prepare it, offer it. That's your job. His job is to eat or not eat. As I said earlier, I have no problem with making some adaptations to a LO's meal to fit their needs/preference to a degree (larger chunks for ease of picking up, adapting to finger food rather than wet soups), but you are the one in charge of meals and there is no need to offer a vast array of different foods at each meal. At least 1 food you know he likes or has eaten before along with 1 new food or one he may not be so keen on. It's one thing (and IMO acceptable) to make meatballs instead of ground meat with a spag bol, meat balls are easier to pick up, I'd say it's even ok to offer 'dry' pasta with the tom sauce on the side as a dip, or to offer spiral pasta instead of spaghetti (again easier to pick up) but these adaptations are quite different from offering multiple meal options and keeping trying different foods until he eats something. If he doesn't eat this meal just move on, he will be hungrier for the next and will very quickly realise you are not going to keep offering all sorts of different things.
Portions are very small at this age, it looks like he's getting a decent meal or two each day and many LOs like to eat pretty much the same thing each day, diets need to be healthy rather than massively varied. I can understand your wish for him to try lots of new things but this can come in time, keep offering the new foods but also some same basic things too.
I've given you quite a lot to think about there. Hopefully something will be helpful for you.
What do you think?
