How often does / did your BLW baby gag on their food?

[cockle84]

I know that the idea of the gag reflex is to prevent choking and that with BLW babies they are learning how to eat and respond to putting too much food in and trying to swallow without chewing properly but it's very difficult to stay calm when she really seems to struggle gagging sometimes. She is 7 months and very good at getting food to her mouth and her chewing is definitely improving but she does seem to gag quite a bit and sometimes it's quite distressing watching her retch. My husband and in laws are not familiar with BLW and if they saw her gag in this way they would absolutely freak out. Does the gagging get less or should I give her food that is easy to cope with until she's more competent?
Your experiences please? Thanks

I found the gagging stopped very quickly. Within a few weeks of starting BLW.

Try and stick with it because its so worth it. We did BLW with dd2 and she will eat anything now. She is just 2 now and at lunch today she sat and happily at roast beef, Yorkshire pud, and tons of veg with no help from anyone.

Meant to say just try and give your dd soft food for now, things that will break up in her mouth easily or things she can suck like toast fingers. My dd also use to love little things like peas or sweetcorn.

Spears of very ripe pear are also good.

I also found the gagging stopped quickly, I'd say it only happened a handful of times at the very beginning.

DD is also 7 months. She gags maybe once every couple of days, usually when overfilling her mouth with potato or on long stringy things (strips of meat).

Yes happycamel this is exactly the things she does. Anyway to stop her over filling her mouth?

Well, I wouldn't start out with strips of solid meat and potato.... how are you supposed to eat that with no or very few teeth? Could you chew and swallow that without your teeth? I don't think I could.

The idea of baby-led weaning is that you can give chunks of solid meat, potato and pretty much anything else to a baby over 6 months. My son is 6.5 months and loves sucking on stuff like that. He has no teeth, so he doesn't chew, but he gets the juices, and occasionally mashes stuff with his mouth enough to break it up. He doesn't get frustrated, because he doesn't know any different. It's all fun to him.

He gags perhaps once at every meal at the moment, but it's getting better. It happens equally with solid finger food and mushy stuff like porridge, if he puts too much in his mouth.

I did a baby first aid course at my local children's centre, which I found very reassuring - for me, it clarified the difference between gagging and choking, and made me feel that I'd at least know what to do if anything bad ever did happen.

I found that my DD also did a bit of gagging in the early stages, maybe once or twice a day. I'd agree that it mostly happened with longer bits of food, spaghetti etc, so I'd just chop it up a bit shorter. But it would happen with other food but she soon got the hang of it. apparently the gag reflex moves towards the back of tongue. It took maybe a couple of months for the gagging to stop.

You could try food that will get mushed up more quickly in her mouth e.g ripe pear, buttered toast, mashed potato based food (on a loaded spoon), weetabix, breadsticks with philly (to soften it a bit), pieces of nectarine - she'd quite often suck/chew the flesh off and hand back a piece of peel.

HTH

DS gagged lots at first, particularly on things he really liked because he would stuff so much in his mouth

My DS is 6 months and we've been weaning with a mix of puree and BLW for just over a month. He prefers to feed himself so I've got used to gagging very quickly. Getting less and less and he's learning how to chew/gum quite well now.

I find that corgette (sp) is a particular fave - also parsnip, pear, melon. Anything with a skin so that he can chew off the soft flesh.

Check out your DD's poo - you'll then see that some stuff is getting through. We had a roast last night and so this morning's poo inspection was good fun!!

rabbitstew my older boys didn't have a single tooth till at least 10months and managed to chew and swallow a pretty impressive range of foods. my 9month old is doing some pretty good 'biting' and chewing with no teeth.

Of course, if the gagging is unpleasant to the baby, then they'll stop playing with the food. It they keep doing it without being put off, it must sound worse than it actually is. If it's upsetting to you, however, you'll freak the baby out, so I really fail to see the point of giving your child something if their reaction to it upsets or unnerves you and they aren't getting any nutritional benefit from it (sorry, I don't see how a 6-month old baby can go from drinking milk to successfully digesting chunks of meat it has sucked on, even if the baby has enjoyed the experience, rather than developing a future taste for sucking on old leather and pooing it out whole if they swallow it). I seriously doubt there is any evidence whatsoever that blw results in 100% of children being happy to eat anything for the rest of their lives. There's actually nothing wrong with giving your child food that they can play with, suck on and chew but that doesn't cause them to gag at every meal, so why not give them a bit less of the food they gag on and a bit more of something else until they're a little bit older???

The gagging isn't unpleasant for them - it's just a defence mechanism to stop them sticking it too far in.

Food is fun until their one - there won't be any decrease in milk feeds yet.

As a veggie it pains me to say they will be getting the 'goodness' from the meat they suck on, but hey ho, for the greater BLW good.

DD didn't have an teeth till 9 mo. They are quite capable of biting and chewing without.

Babies love BLW!

Gagging doesn't seem to bother my DS at all. He just spits out whatever it was and shoves something else in. And like I said, he gags on soft food too.

I stay calm when she gags because I know that she's not choking. She loves feeding herself and does so with such gusto that's the problem. i guess it's something she'll learn in time like everything else. They fall over when learning to walk etc. Just wanted some reassurance that it's normal really. Thanks for all your replies, very interesting reading.

you wouldn't give a 6month old chunks of meat to start weaning with and they would only be sucking the juices off it, not 'biting' or breaking off huge bits to swallow. all food comes out pretty much undigested at first anyway, whether it's pieces via BLW or pureed fruit/veg.
By doing BLW we are not setting out to make our babies gag on tough/hard food and eat anything and everything within a couple of months. if they struggle with something in particular then you would leave it for a bit then try it a few days/weeks later, or just keep offering it until baby is used to it.

success tonight, one very minor gag, not really even a gag! She's definitely getting the hang of it!

I found our DD stopped doing it at every meal after a few weeks, she still does it every now and then (4 months on) but it doesn't bother her in the slightest. Everytime I gags I always say 'you got it?' which gives her a few seconds by which time it's usually out again and she's grinning at me.

Only once had a gagging incident that made her sick but she had been poorly that week. She gagged tonight on a biggish slice of cooked carrot but it's only because she loves carrots and tries to eat them too quickly so sometimes forgets to chew.