For two days I have been trying to get Evelyn to eat solid food. I tried giving her mashed tofu with a spoon and she screamed each time. Once I did get something into her mouth she wouldn’t swallow it, just collected it in her mouth. I think I might have made a bit of headway on that. I figured out that the problem was that she doesn’t think that she should swallow the food so I gave her a drink from the bottle after each mouthful yesterday. That seemed to get the tofu down. Today instead of doing that I showed her a book that made her happy and she seemed to forget there was food in her mouth and swallowed it without trouble. But still getting a spoon to her mouth is really hard. She flails her arms around and I have to cover them with a blanket so that she can’t hit the spoon away. I feel really horrible.
I also had limited success using a mesh bag “teether” which is basically a small bag that one can put pureed food into and the baby is supposed to chew on it and the food comes into the baby’s mouth in small pieces. She chews on the handle and when I try to gently turn it around she screams. Once I managed to get it in her mouth she did manage to eat a small bit.
I tried to give her a rice cereal biscut - I think this thing is supposed to turn to mush as the baby chews on it, but she just scraped a whole bunch of crumbs off and got them all over the stroller and her clothing. I then tried mushing up the biscut in formula and putting that in the teether mesh bag and all she threw it around and got mushed biscut on her clothing.
However we seem to have a larger problem in that Evelyn is refusing to have milk more often. I tried giving her bottles at every opportunity and she has only had 400 mL or so. I have tried nursing her and she refused to nurse after a minute or two.
We can feel her bottom teeth coming in and sometimes babies loose their appetite when teething. It would be nice to just leave it at that. But with the whole weaning thing and me going back to work in January I am worried it’s more complicated. I am just so scared of what will happen if I don’t try and feed her.
Evelyn also hasn’t been sleeping well lately and has continued to wake up throughout the night. I have also had a lot of back pain lately and I think my scoliosis is really starting to make itself felt. I have tried not to carry her in the sling for two days with the hopes that it will help but I am starting to think my baby carrying days are over. It makes me really sad.
We’re going back home for Christmas. I was looking forward to it but now I think it’s just going to be a horrible sleepless nightmare with me having to try and feed her all the time.