Fed Up with Feeding

Weight loss. Lethargic behavior. Slow development. When a baby or toddler suddenly refuses to eat — or was never very interested in the first place — it’s stressful, draining, and damaging to a baby’s development. What’s a parent to do?

Eliana was losing her mind. Meir was eight months old, but he only wanted to nurse — and it was no longer enough to supply him with his nutritional needs. He refused every bottle. He spat out his baby food, to the accompaniment of horrified grimaces. “I tried everything — different types of bottles, adding oil to his baby food to up the calories — but Meir didn’t eat, and he kept losing weight. And he screamed all the time. We were both miserable,” Eliana remembers.

Shulamis’s seven-month-old Yossi followed an eerily similar pattern: No bottles. No food. A desperate battle to preserve his weight, and the losing fight to put something — anything — into his mouth. Irritability.

Then there were his delayed milestones. “Yossi would just lie on the carpet while his peers were crawling around and exploring,” Shulamis says.

“Other mothers told me about their ‘picky’ kids and said Meir was just going through a phase,” Eliana says. “Pickiness is normal — Meir wasn’t.”