Five-month-old baby refuses solid foods
My five-month-old son is simply refusing to eat solid foods. Whenever the spoon comes near him, he just starts to cry and fuss. He only drinks five bottles a day with about five ounces in each. His nighttime feeding is usually a little bit bigger. Any suggestions?
Question:Sue Gilbert
Sue Gilbert works as a consulting nutritionist. For many years she worked with Earth's Best Organic Baby Food, integrating nutrition and... Read more
Patience and persistence is the best advise at this point. Your baby is still young. It is not uncommon for eating solids to be a two steps forward, one back type of progression.
You want to continue to offer solids, so that when he is ready to go back to them, they are there for him. Offer the solids when he is hungry, but not starved. That may mean you feed him half of his bottle, then stop and offer the cereal and finish off with the rest of the bottle. Or choose a feeding when he is not too hungry -- not the first feeding of the morning -- and make the cereal the first item you offer.
Initially, offering solids is just to get him used to the idea, and is not really to fulfill any nutritional requirement, so don't fret if he takes very little. Learning to eat is a lot like learning to swim. You start by first getting your toes wet, not by diving right in. I will bet that in a month or two, he will be back to eating solids. For now, there is no need to worry.
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