Question in the title really..just wondering what you are giving your 7 month olds for breakfast/lunch/tea, if you've got that far yet. There's certain things Will just won't entertain and to get him to eat them I'm mixing them with baby rice/milk which he will then enjoy. Also, he's strugggling with apples and pears now, bizarrely after enjoying them for almost 2 months. He loves banana but it makes him have hard poos! He's generally doing well though, I think. Just wondering what you're having success/failure with?

Breakfast: Porridge with apple, pear or banana but sometimes she has toast or pancakes.

Lunch: Pitta bread, fruit, youghurt, toast - lots of different things, it really just depends on what we have in.

Dinner: A bit of what we have normally.

I do quite a lot of the Annabel Karmel purees too so I can use them when we having something unsuitable/can't be bothered cooking. Aoife refuses to eat food from jars and prefers lumpy food to smooth purees - she's a little odd like that!

E is 6.5 he has porridge (Hipp Organic or Organix flavoured cereal) for breakfast and normally a couple of toast fingers.  For dinner we have just started giving him what we have either mashed if possible or blended.  This was on the HV's advice, up until last Tues he was having quite bland dinners.  Tonight he had lamb and bean casserole!  Tomorrow is fish pie.

We haven't started lunch yet, still on 2 meals atm.

Thanks both, Natasha, is Aoife having snacks as well inbetween meals? I have just in the past couple of days dropped Will's 2:30pm milk feed as he was just throwing the whole thing up and it was getting silly. He is still having the required amount of milk per day so it wasn't necesarry anymore. Therefore I am trying to stick to the following times:

7:30am - bottle feed

9:30am - breakfast

12:30 - lunch

4:30 - tea

7:30pm - bottle feed

meaning there is quite big gaps between meals. I feel I need to bring some snacks in mid morning and mid afternoon but don't want to be tied to thinking of yet another 'meal' IYKWIM.

She doesn't have snacks, she seems to spend enough time eating as it is! She's a good eater and loves her milk, I have to watch not to feed her too much! Our day looks like this:

8:00am - Wakes up/Bottle

9:00am - Breakfast

11:00am - Naps for around an hour

1:00pm - Lunch

2:00pm - Bottle

2:30pm - Nap for an hour

5:30pm - Dinner

7:00pm - Bottle/bed

She takes 6oz in her bottles apart from the bedtime one when she has 8oz. She doesn't seem to need snacks as she's not hungry, she's content and her weight is fine so I don't do snacks. I don't give her a lot of dairy products as she's still taking her milk and doesn't seem to be too fussed on youghurt or other dairy products.

Aoife sets her own schedule, writing it down makes it seem strict but she fell into a pattern and seems to like it - I dare not disrupt it in case all hell breaks loose!

Izzy is 8 months an dtoday has had:

7am bottle followed by a bowl of natural yoghurt with fruit puree

11.45 Cheese sandwich, cucumber sticks, couple of organix 'carrot sticks' crisps, rice cake and a petits filous

3.30 Couple of rice cakes and beaker of water

5pm Jar of spag carbonara and a pot of fruity custard

6.45 Bottle feed.

She doesn't have enough milk, even if she eats hardly anything she just doesn't want milk!

SarahM - we have the opposite.

I just can't get E to eat. She is still on 6 feeds a day (still bfing) and is just not interested in food.  She was eating cereal in the mornings, but has even gone off that now. 

We were trying BLW mixed with spoon feeding; but both have gone out the window.  She just won't let the spoon pass her lips and although she is quite adept at picking up food (and eating it when she feels like it) she usually picks it up, bangs it around a bit and then throws it on the floor. 

I'm actually starting to get a bit worried - she's never been a great eater but today has hardly had anything other than milk.  Might go and see the HV tomorrow but does anyone have any suggestions in the meantime?  Am determined not to turn mealtimes into a cry-fest - which is quickly what it's becomming.

Ems

Pipey1:

SarahM - we have the opposite.

I just can't get E to eat. She is still on 6 feeds a day (still bfing) and is just not interested in food.  She was eating cereal in the mornings, but has even gone off that now. 

We were trying BLW mixed with spoon feeding; but both have gone out the window.  She just won't let the spoon pass her lips and although she is quite adept at picking up food (and eating it when she feels like it) she usually picks it up, bangs it around a bit and then throws it on the floor. 

I'm actually starting to get a bit worried - she's never been a great eater but today has hardly had anything other than milk.  Might go and see the HV tomorrow but does anyone have any suggestions in the meantime?  Am determined not to turn mealtimes into a cry-fest - which is quickly what it's becomming.

Ems

How old is your LO?

oh sorry,  she's just over 7 months.  I was initially hoping she would get better withing a few weeks, but it's going from bad to worse.  She did have bad constipation and I was wondering whether she associated that with feeding and that's why she's refusing?  Am trying not to pressure her or me and make it fun and let her get on with it - but I dont' know at what stage I'm supposed to really worry???

Pipey, could she be teething? Amy had happily taken 3 meals a day for over a month and then two weeks ago refused everything apart from breastmilk.  That lasted three days, then we had another few days of only accepting baby rice or yoghurt.  It's taken nearly two weeks for her to start eating properly again.

HV said not to force food, to offer it to her and if she didn't want it, just to take it away and try again later.  I knew she was hungry cos she was taking massive breastfeeds, but the minute the spoon touched her mouth, she would turn away and start crying.

In response to the original post, Amy has baby porridge mixed with fruit for breakfast, and then an Annabel Karmel chicken/fish/veg puree depending on what I've managed to prepare.  She's tried toast but wasn't too keen, but she loves slices of banana and avocado!

S has the following:

Breakfast: Full fat yogurt with apple sauce/fruit mixed in.  Sometimes toast fingers.  Sometimes rice cake dipped in yogurt.  Today she had home-stewed plums with yogurt.

Dinner: Either a jar of organic baby food or some blended mush I've made her, plus a dessert, either jarred or homemade.

She also gets cucumber if I have to keep her quiet in the highchair for a bit.  I've pretty much abandoned any serious attempt at BLW since she actually consumes very little of it and it's so much hassle.

Today I cooked up acorn squash for her and mushed it.  Last week she had cottage pie mushed up.  I am doing chicken tomorrow so will give her some of that, and fish later in the week.  She loves rice cakes and had avocado on them the other day - loved it!

I suppose I should start giving her lunch also - right now her nap goes 11-1 ish so she sleeps through lunch, but I think she could use the calories.

G is also struggling with teething at the moment so her eating has gone slightly to pot, but she is still doing 3 meals a day also just prefers fromage frais at the moment, probably because it is cool on her gums.

Prior to teething a normal day was:

Breakfast: porridge or weetabix with fruit mashed in. Fromage frais. A bit of toast to try as well.

Lunch: veges or friut puree, often with some baby rice. Fromage frais or fruit like mango fingers.

Dinner: veges or fruit puree often with some chicken chopped in or lentils added or cheese sauce etc.

Today she is having pasta with tomato sauce at lunch time and then something with cheese sauce tonight - maybe pasta if she is ok with it at lunchtime or veges.

Only thing that hasn't gone down very well so far is cauli. I want to try her on pitta bread but keep forgetting to get some.

Curly Girly - yes, I was wondering about teething.  I think she could be - she is ramming everything into her mouth at the moment (apart from food that is!). 

We've just had another breakfast of refusing and crying and I'm just finding it so hard.  I am doing my best not to let it get to me but I get annoyed with her - which is wrong I know.  I think I will go down to 2 meals a day to see if that helps - at the moment we are trying with 3 but the stress is too much for me and her.

I guess she'll get there in her own time!

Breakfast - Weetabix with hot milk (half to a whole weetabix, just like Daddy has) and sometimes some toast

Lunch - we're on lumpy stuff and about to move onto more or less what we eat so today is cottage pie, left over from lunch at the weekend

Tea - usually a banana with some natural yoghurt but we're having pitta and humous today for a change

We're trying to avoid the whole puree thing - she's ok with lumps so we're moving onto normal food mashed with a fork / finger food and generally just playing around with it

She'll be onto breastfeed in the morning and evening and formula mid-morning and mid-afternoon by the end of this week

That has reminded me - our purees aren't actually pureed, just mashed and have been for a while. I misplaced my hand blender so it was the easy way of doing it