9 month old still gagging a lot

[Moonshine160]

Hi, my DS is 9 months old this week. When he was nearly 6 months we started weaning in the traditional way by giving him single veg purées then fruit etc. When he was nearly 7 months and he’d got the hang of it I gave him thicker purées by blending up whatever meals we were having and spoon feeding him, and giving him finger foods alongside the purées (these have usually been toast fingers, steamed veg, cheese, sweet potato chunks etc). He is doing fine with his puréed meals and can handle thick textures with little lumps but I’m wanting to steer him away from the purées a bit to try and encourage him to pick things up more and feed himself. He mostly plays with any finger food, sort of stares at it and ‘investigates’, if he does manage to eat some, even a little bite, he often still gags a lot and is sometimes sick. This lunch time for example, he had a bite of toast (and it was only a tiny bite at that) and he gagged and gagged to the point that he threw up everything he had eaten and some of his milk feed that he’d had an hour before. I feel like we’re stuck on purées because hes still struggling with textures a lot. Does he just have a sensitive gag reflex? Is there anything I can do to help this or will it improve over time with practice? Is it normal for a 9 month old?

[JiltedJohnsJulie]

My DS was like this. We discovered it was tongue tie.