Oh my HB, I don't know what I would have done if I were you, probably would have used a few choice words in telling her to mind her own business. I'm not known for holding my tongue I had a few people at a kids bday party couple of week ago starring me down because I gave DD2 a salad and ham wrap, I knew what they were thinking, but I bit my tongue cause it was my friends family.

Kate, it can be hard worrying about whether they are getting enough, I know from experience with my 'little miss food aversion' how much stress it can be. I think I have slowly comes to terms with the fact that they seem to know whats best for themselves, and I now am much more relaxed about the quantities the girls eat and when and what. I'm trying to follow DD2 lead this time and enjoy her experimentation with food instead of worrying about how much she gets in. I think probably doing BLS with your little one will probably benefit with the gagging as she will be teaching herself how to cope with it, more than likely it would be something that she would do on purees and then have a bit of difficulty transition to lumps, they tend to get used to the purees as it just glides down. I remember my MCH telling me some babies are super sensitive to tastes and textures and they can take a bit longer than others to adjust to eating.

Cause she is BF water intake isn't essential, more of a learning thing. I think if she were thirsty she might take more, maybe a different cup even a straw? How often is she feeding? A lot of 8 month olds are still having night feeds, DD2 is 10 months and still has 7pm, 11pm, 4am, 7am, 11am, 3pm. You might find as she gets more active her weight gain will slow, its normal for it to as they are burning more energy, another reason why night feeds are still normal. Their weight gain also does start to taper off as they get older too. My DD was a lightweight and still is, the other kids at daycare tower over her and she still wears size 1, sometimes 2 pants. DD2 was a big girl born, 9lb, 56cm, on 97th percentile, she has slowly dropped percentiles to just under 50th and is lucky to put on 200g a month but she is developing well, is happy and wets and fills plenty of nappies, I prefer to just go by that, I don't think our children were ever genetically prone to be big kids, neither of us are. The month she started crawling and using the walker she lost 200gm.

I think you just have to use your instincts to choose whether she needs them or is just using them for comfort, I have dropped a couple of feeds by force cause I figured she didn't really need them as they only lasted a couple of minutes. It does get easier, as long as you work on it if it needs it.