DD Only Wants to Play, Not Eat

[Mom to M&M]

I posted this in the feeding/weaning section (probably where it best goes) but thought I'd try here too since it's also A related. Any help would be greatly appreciated...

A little background: due to DDs reflux, GI doc had us start her on rice cereal at 4.5 months and some fruit shortly thereafter. Big mistake - she got very constipated and her system wasn't ready yet. So we stopped all solids. However, she had been enjoying them and eating them pretty well.

Well we restarted last week (she's almost 7 months) - first avocado, now doing carrot. Problem is that DD now only wants to play, not eat. She now thinks her booster seat (ties onto back of chair - no room for high chair) is to play since she does love to play in there. So she just looks around for her toys and sucks her thumb. If you give her a toy she just plays with that and doesn't want the food. She doesn't cry - she will take a few bites, but just then pushes it away and looks for toys.

Any advice here? Give before bottle so she'll be hungrier? Use booster only for feeding and not for play?

Similarly, she's been odd with her bottles lately. Gets really hungry a little before 4 hours but can usually wait. Will eat 4 or 4.5 ounces really quickly and then play with another .5 ounce and then refuse to eat more as she's too distracted. She recently learned to army crawl and only wants to do that and/or chew on toys (she's teething). Then she gets hungry and will usually finish bottle once she starts getting tired - so I give her the rest (another 2 ounces or so) close to her nap time but make sure to separate it out by changing diaper and doing story and all after.

Help!

[Nikki~Nathanamp;Danielle]

I personally wouldn't stress too much about how much solids she's eating at this stage.  Milk is still the primary source of nutrition and food is for tasting and a little topping up.  Sounds like you're doing fine.  She maybe does associate the booster for play (we also only use boosters but I guess I never used it for activity time), but just continue as you are but perhaps use the booster less for activity time and solely for eating.  Just continue what you're doing with offering food and if she's hungry she will have a nibble.  It's just about setting up routine, but don't stress over the volume.  I also don't think it's necessary to switch milk and solids yet just to get her to eat them, in NZ we're not advised to switch until 9mthsish, so I wouldn't worry about it (in fact I still do milk first at 11mths). 

I think a lot of it will be developmental, being nosey, other interesting things she'd rather be doing etc.  Just be guided by your dd and let her continue to enjoy meal times rather than it become a boring chore.  When she's really hungry she'll eat.

Also with wanting bottles sooner than 4hrs, I'd just go with it, once food is introduced I personally don't worry about feed times so much - I felt as long as I fitted in the 4 milk feeds a day and offer the solids in between it didn't really matter when it all happened - so they're actually eating more regularly than before solids were introduced.

HTH

[Mom to M&M]

Thx Nikki. I agree not to switch it up yet and will not stress. Actually, I think it may be as much due to teething as to distractions.  Her bottom two front teeth are REALLY close to cutting and driving her nuts (affecting her bottle feeding too) so we'll just see. And yea - if she's hungry I always feed her early - sometimes it's 4 hours, sometimes 3.5 - whatever... Thanks!