Why does she do this?

Previously I have had the "perfect" eater. She ate everyting I ever offered and always ate the whole lot!

For the past 3 days Lauren has started this thing where as soon as I get the highchair out she protests. I ignore her and put her in and buckle her up, she starts gagging, coughing, spluttering and carrying on, its like full on gagging etc.

I still offer her weetbix for breakfast, she pushes me away and does not want a bar of it. I offer toast, she has one bite and then throws it all on the floor, so obviously she is not hungry.

Lunchtime comes around, she's happy to sit in the highchair for this meal, I offer finger foods only. She eats everything I offer, but offer her a spoon of something, eg custard or yoghurt and back comes the gagging etc!

Dinnertime, again she's happy to sit in the highchair, but will only eat finger food. She will have a few spoons of tinned toddler dinner, but she is really not that interested and along comes the gagging again!

What has happened? Is this a "normal" thing to go through? She has 3 x 200ml bottles per day and about 100mls of water throughout the day. She is not a foodie type person, she would happily go all day with no food, but then was never a fussy eater either. She is driving me mental!!!!!

TIA

Edited by peachy

Well Thomas never did the gagging thing but he totally went off all spoon fed foods for awhile, I couldnt feed him anything he was asserting his independence I suppose! He loves finger foods so I just kept offering him that, does she have breakfast first up in the morning?

he will eat from a spoon again now but we have to both have a spoon if you know what i mean

Maybe finger food is all the rage for Lauren now, and it might be kinder on your nerves to just serve her a big variety of that? You could use some puree's as 'sauce' for her to dip her food in, if you're wanting to get those into her still (if she sees you dipping foods in sauces she might like the idea). It's a different situation, but in my attempts to get Ella to eat fresh fruit I offered her a tiny bit of Hershey's sauce to dip it in - she though that was a great idea, and I quickly substituted the choc sauce for "very special apple sauce" (pureed apples). Worked a couple of times until she wised up and just started licking the 'sauce' off the fruit wedges!

Thanks for the advice. I never really thought about the "not wanting to be fed like a baby" idea. I do have that book you recommended MrsMojo. I will give it a go!

I do offer finger foods most of the time, I guess I am just running out of ideas of what to give her! Lunch I would normally give her 2 lil red boy sausages, a cheese sandwich and 5 grapes and some banana slices. I always do variations so she gets a wide variety of tastes. She always eats it all.

I will try her on more finger food for dinner perhaps. I will give that a whirl and see how we go!

Thanks for your advice, always good ideas as usual

Spencer still has a bottle first in the morning, he has a bottle and bum change and gets up and then I give him breaky about an hour later, hasn't caused any problems so far. And you have a nice big gap between bottle and breaky so she should be hungry enough for it. Perhaps you could try giving less in the 5am bottle and see if that makes a difference. I too would not be getting up at 5am.

BTW Michaela still wakes between 5am & 5:30am but now she doesn't have a bottle in the am there's no chance of her going back to sleep so I have to get up at that time too at make breakfast (personally I'd continue giving her a bottle and getting the extra lie-in)