6 Month Old Refusing to Eat Baby Food or Baby Cereal

Try Ann Karmel recipies, she has different books and you can make her food and it will have better taste that Gerber or others. Good luck!

You need to discuss this with the baby's doctor and take documentation to WIC. They will work with you. Your baby probably isn't ready for solids and she's telling you that. My daughter would not accept solids until she was over 9 months old. Once she started accepting solids we started slowly and I followed her cues. She is now 18 months old and a great eater of everything-veggies, fruits, protein, etc.

There is a very good reason they now tell moms to delay solids. They now understand babies have what is called an "open gut" and they do not have the enzymes necessary to process solids until a certain age. Some parents are even told to wait up to a year for solids!:

http://www.kellymom.com/nutrition/solids/delay-solids.html

Solids are just for practice and to supplement breastmilk or formula for the first year. They are not to replace it and definitely at just 6 months old it is for practice not a necessity.

Please, please, please do not cut the nipple on the bottle to force feed cereal. That does not begin healthy eating habits and you will be overloading her system with something she is telling you she does not need or want at this time. Do not give her Karo syrup. Her system does not need pure sugar. Do not give her table food that will contain more salt, fat and sugar than she will need or her system can handle. She is telling you she is not ready. Babies know. And she is not ready.

Hi there,

I agree with Dori W. My first baby did not eat anything solid until 8.5 months, and then it was perhaps a spoonful or two at most.

She was not ready at 6 months, not a chance!

Take your cues from your infant... she's relying on you to be her advocate.

Try adding pureed fruit to the cereal or a little dark Karo syrup which has iron in it and help relieve constipaation that can come from diet change. You can try making your own baby food from fresh veggies and freezing it in an ice tray for ready to use small portions its healthier tast better and is cheaper than jar foods.

Hi, R.. It's really sad that the government is trying to force your baby to eat something that she is just not ready to eat. Is there any way that you can speak to a person, a social worker perhaps, and explain that your baby is not ready for cereal, and to keep giving you enough formula to feed her properly?

Failing that...the only other way I can think of to get her to want to eat the cereal is by making sure she is hungry when you try to feed her. I'm not suggesting starving her, just offer her the cereal before offering her any other food. You might try also making a very small amount of it and a large amount of mashed fruit such as bananas. Mix a tiny bit of cereal into a large amount of mashed bananas if that's what she likes. She probably doesn't like the texture or the taste of the cereal; I don't like such things myself. She doesn't have the understanding to eat what's available, and to tolerate what she doesn't like.

Also, be very careful to not show any anxiety when you're trying to feed her. She will react badly and create a power struggle if she senses that you are trying to make her eat a particular food.

Anyway, the right strategy, I think, is to mix a tiny bit of cereal with a lot of pureed fruit. I would use no more than a teaspoon of cereal with a whole cup of fruit. She probably can't eat the whole cup of food, but that's the combination I think you should start with. Don't let her see you mix it, either.

I have always cautioned moms to never put cereal into an infant's bottle, but that was specifically because they were doing it to newborns who aren't ready for cereal or ready to sleep longer between feedings. In this case, I think it would be OK if you put a couple of teaspoons of cereal in 8 ounces of milk in her bottle. Her body is ready for it now, and just because the government is forcing you to make this change, you need to supplement her milk feedings with the cereal.

You may need to make the hole in the nipple of the bottle a tiny bit larger to accomodate the thicker liquid.

I will pray that someone in the system is able to reverse this process of taking away some of the formula, at leastt long enough for her to be ready in her mind and her taste buds for more solid foods.

Peace,
Syl

I had the same problem with my daughter so I put her baby food with al ittle formula in her bottle and made the nipple hole bigger! It worked like a charm and I did that until she was almost a year old.

My daughter had a gag reflex issue where she would throw up when given food by spoon.

good luck

My 3rd child NEVER, EVER ate baby food. At first, when I kept trying and he wasn't interested, I figured he was just not ready. Then one day he was sitting next to me while I was eating a muffin and he looked interested, so I gave him a teeny itty bitty crumb of it and he loved it!! So I started giving him whatever I was eating if it was something that I could break into teeny crumb size pieces, and I gradually gave bigger pieces as he got older.

Some moms (especially those with only one child) will tell you things that will make you freak out and worry about every single thing that goes into his mouth for fear of allergies or digestion or whatever. By the time I got to my third child, I finally started listening to my own mom instead of reading all of the books and articles that make moms so paranoid and over-cautious. My mom showed me in my baby book that I drank skim milk when I was just a few months old (I'm not recommending this- simply telling you to illustrate a point) and was eating every kind of baby food by 3 months old, including the meat ones! And I stopped eating baby foods and went on to table foods just a couple of months later. Our moms and the generations before them did not have all of these rules today's moms seem to want to follow. If your baby isn't interested in baby cereal and baby food, try any other foods you can get your hands on. The idea is to introduce different tastes and textures, but he should still be getting the majority of his nutrician from formula or breast milk.

wic will most likely change yuor vouchers if you explain what is happening. i have been on wic in three different states and they have all been great about changing my vouchers to reflect what we actually use. they will even give you goats milk mostplaces, which is SO SO SO much better for your baby than cows milk.

good luck

I have a 7 month old and the last few weeks she has not wanted rice cereal or baby food. She really likes to chew her food. So, I steam fruits and veggies and giver her things she can pick up by herself. I don't know if your baby is ready for that, but I started trying it when she was trying to pick things off the floor and eat them. Your baby may not like the texture of baby food.

Sometimes baby's hate rice cereal by itself. Make sure you know what foods she can eat by her age. If you can make her food with a little plastic food mill, that would be the best and you can get safe plastic freezer containers that will freeze just the right amount per serving.
Try mixing in banana (fresh and pureed). Baby is probably teething too, so you might want to give some Tylenol or ibuprofen 30 minutes before eating. Highland's make a homeopathic teething tablet that is supposed to be good too, but not when the teeth are starting to break through.
Jarred baby food can taste pretty bad and you may have a baby who knows!

She is probably allergic to that stuff, and you should not get her to eat it.
Give her little bits of what you eat.
You are very smart to not force her- well done,k

I agree with what Tammi said and as she said it's the rules these days and my baby also didn't like the processed cereal, so I give him real table food and he prefers that. One note if you look on the formula ingredients, the 1st ingredient is skimmed milk and it's actually cow's milk processed that we are giving the babies anyway. It's when it gets to the natural whole form that they recommend not before 1yr. I tried mixing my baby's cereal with evap milk diluted and he hasn't had any problems, so if you want to try adding that to your cereal, that might be an option later on when the formula runs out.

Don't worry about it. If she's happy with formula keep her on it. WIC is only supposed to supplement not replace.
My daughter didn't eat solids until she was 11 months and breastfed exclusively.

I hope Donita is right about WIC because baby food is just an introduction to food, not a replacement for formula. Please keep her on formula. Sounds like she is just not ready to eat. Some babies take longer and that's ok.

start by giving the cereal very runny with a lot of milk .even cut the nipple of a bottle to a wide hole and let her start to get used to cereal a little bit at a time.gradually make a little thicker.always have the same temp as her bottles.goodluck this worked for us.