BLW - how much gagging is normal?

[LittleSausageFingers]

My 6.5 month old won't accept a spoon, so we're BLW, which I'm not a fan of because my nerves can't take it (although i love the concept). So far we've given adult finger sized chunks of cooked carrot, courgette, baby corn (halved lengthways) and broccoli florets. Big bites have been taken, not chewing, then gagging and vomiting. I don't think much has gone down (or it's been sicked up alongside the last milk feed). My question is how much gagging can i expect? I'm terrified of choking (i understand the difference between choking and gagging, and I've done a first aid course, i just can't get over it). Any advice/reassurance would be much appreciated!

[bonzo77]

Some gag lots. It's them
Learning to coordinate their mouths to move food around and swallow. If you're only doing BLW to avoid spoon feeding, why not try much smaller bits of soft food and offer them on the tip of your finger? Like bananas, avocado and all the cooked things you've offered already, scrambled egg. Also purees that are not too wet etc.

[HeyRobot]

If it's holding the food that they like then rice cakes and toast can often take quite a bit of gumming, and you can put hummous, avocado on them etc. Rice cakes are less likely than toast to come off in huge bites if I was choosing on that basis.

Small bits of what you've been doing straight into the mouth, as bonzo said, is something DD is keen on and even more so if it's something we're eating.

Would your baby like using the spoon? You could put thick stuff on a spoon for them to pick up, or maybe having a spoon to play with sometimes will interest them as a means to making fronds with it.

In my experience the gagging stage was quite brief but she needed something she could hold onto for long enough to get little pieces rather than soft stuff like avocado and banana that I tried first - these just slid everywhere and she bit off entire mouthfuls, gagged and cried. She sort of understood chewing from working on the rice cakes and then she did much better with the other stuff.

Gagging is horrible though - I have done a lot of first aid, am not phased by most things but it terrifies me!

[Hockeydude]

I would keep on trying the spoon, again and again. A small soft spoon with a very small amount of something like puréed apple so you can get started. I don't like gagging at all and spoon fed both mine.

[LittleSausageFingers]

Thanks for the replies. We haven't had any gagging in the last couple of days, so maybe she's getting the hang of it, but she spits out a lot of stuff so I'm not convinced anything is going down. She does seem interested in the food and seems to love cucumber. I've tried a loaded spoon and the contents just get flicked off before the spoon makes it into her mouth! Will give rice cakes a go.

[HeyRobot]

Cream cheese sticks well to a spoon just in case you haven't tried that. Our kitchen walls are going to need repainting at the rate DD is catapulting stuff at them with her spoon. Organix also do massive carrot puffs that look like giant wotsits and are easy to hold.