My baby doesn't eat, my baby sleeps badly 2026

Many parents are distressed because they believe that their baby eats little or because he or she refuses solids, or because they do not know if they should offer certain foods during certain months or because their child wakes up at night. Is it worrying or is it normal?

Doctor José María Paricio, pediatrician at the Alcoi hospital, president of APILAM (Association for the Promotion and Scientific and Cultural Research of Breastfeeding) and author of the book You are the best mother in the world (Editions B) reassures us.

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My son doesn't eat

Regarding nutrition, almost everything could be summarized as follows: if the baby continues to grow and gain weight (proportional to its size and the genes that the parents have donated), everything is fine.

Most of the real problems around feeding are generated by the unnecessary actions that parents take when they worry for no reason because they want the child to eat more than he can eat. “With the obesity epidemic that exists, we continue to think that the baby eats little,” says Dr. José María Paricio.

When and how do I give him his first solids?

No more rigid instructions. “How lucky!” Amanda acknowledges. She remembers that for her the worst thing about the first year was making those carefully designed porridges (with fruits, vegetables or fish) and making her baby eat them.

Scheduling the introduction of foods to the millimeter is something that is in clear recession, but that at the same time can cause a certain insecurity for the father.

If no one tells you what to do... how do you know it's time and what to give the baby?

For José María Paricio there are three premises that must not be forgotten:

• Put aside rigidity.
• Never force the child to eat.
• Do not offer junk but healthy food.

Y3 necessary physiological conditions:

• The baby holds the trunk well on his own.
• He puts his hands and things in his mouth easily, that is, he has good hand-mouth coordination.
• He begins to show interest in food when he sees his parents eating: his eyes go wide and he even tries to pick them up.

This is not something that necessarily has to happen after six months. It can happen at seven, eight or nine, and there is no problem because until one year old the baby's main food is milk.

If the six-month-old child does not show any curiosity about food and the parents are not worried... It is because they are choosing family health.

Crushed or in pieces?

“It doesn't matter, we can choose one thing at any given moment,” says Dr. Paricio:

• That the child sitting at the table with the parents picks up the food and tries it is fine. It takes longer and is messier, but baby loves this way of getting to know food.
• If one day the parents are in a hurry and make him porridge, that's fine.

There are many ways, all of them are valid, it is best to forget about rigidity. It's that easy. Without quantities, without stress, without hurry.

He wakes up at night

"It's incredible how many manuals we find on the market about the supposed 'problem' of babies' sleep. The only problem most of the time is that we don't know that they have different rhythms than ours and other needs," says José María Paricio.

You don't have to teach them to sleep

"Children know how to sleep very well, but we want to teach them to sleep at our own time, and for that we are capable of doing very strange things. Before, this was not heard of," says Paricio.

When the baby cries at night... he wants something. If it's not food, it's contact. It is normal and necessary for babies to be in contact with their mother.

But of course, our society is complicated for parents and babies. “We love them more than ever, we take care of them more than ever, but we have tight schedules that force us to get up very early, which makes us feel more irritated when he wakes up several times during the night,” Paricio exemplifies.

That he does this is normal and he goes back to sleep immediately, it is part of his cycles, which stabilize as he matures. If we had nothing to do the next day, it wouldn't be a problem. Methods for “teaching” babies to sleep, which normally involve letting them cry alone so they get used to sleeping, are not recommended at all and can cause real problems. Yes, it is practical to create rituals around bedtime and offer them what they need at all times: milk, contact...