Hi NelleBelle,

PMSL at your Liam just holding his mouth open - they can be such cheeky little things when they want to be, impossible not to love them to pieces.

I'm not really any further with my Liam. I called the 24hr MCHN line and the nurse who answered seemed to think that his lack of interest in solids was linked to the fact that he's also not sleeping through the night. She suggested that I go to sleep school to fix these issues. Then I spoke to my normal MCHN, mostly about the sleeping problems that we have, in that he sleeps well, but just wakes up everynight, at least once, more often 2-3 times, and some nights it's every couple of hours which is very challenging. She's told me to stop feeding him to sleep, which I'm very "guilty" of doing, and I'm meeting with her on Tuesday to talk through things a bit more.

Having said all that, I was at my mum's tonight, along with my sister who has an 8month old, and I gave mum a go at feeding him. We lay him down on the floor with his head on an old, flat pillow,next to his cousin who was getting fed as well, and she gave him some very small spoonfuls of sweet potato. Mum's approach is that you have to kind of push his tongue down with the spoon and get the food as far back into his mouth as you can - sounds a little extreme, but watching it makes sense, and it wasn't mean at all. Liam still gagged himself stupid, and was really not happy with the process, but we do think that he did actually swallow some, which is a nice change. Mum also reckons I should feed him 3-4 spoons of whatever 3 times a day, just to keep reinforcing the "skill", so I think that I might start doing this. Previously I have been sitting him in his highchair for 30-45 minutes, but maybe a smaller length of time more frequently might help us. I'm the eldest of 4 kids, and as mum says, in her day they started solids at 3 months (can you imagine!!!), so as much as she can frustrate me at times, she also has some valid experience, so while I might not admit it to her, I'll give her way a go. The other thing she said was to keep everything very low-key, and to not worry about the singing/noise making/entertaining that I was doing to keep things happy.

So, that's the current plan of attack, don't know that it's all that exciting or revolutionary, but I figure I have nothing to lose. If my MCHN comes up with anything amazing on Tuesday I'll let you know.

better go, someone's awake....