BLW makes me nervous!

[Jamontoast1]

I’ve been giving my 7 month old puréed food so far, have made it slightly coarser now and she gags at almost every mouthful! Is that normal? I try to stay calm.

Today I thought I’d be brave and put a very soft finger food of sweet potato on the tray, she played with it and it ended up being in bite sized chunks - if she put a chunk in her mouth surely that’s a choking hazard?

I don’t get how it would be ok to serve finger food without it becoming chunks and a hazard.

As you can tell, I’m really nervous about her choking when doing BLW or even purée with more texture.

I have done first aid training when I was pregnant but even so!

OP it's such a worry, isn't it!

You've done a great thing doing a first aid course so you are well prepared.

I can only recommend Solid Starts (app and online database). It was an absolute godsend when weaning my DD (and the basic database is free). It lists pretty much every food and tells you how to safely serve it according to age. They also have lots of articles tackling concerns about choking, for example. I remember reading one saying that puree is actually a harder texture than something solid to manage. Go and immerse yourself on there and follow them on IG and you'll come away feeling much more confident.

Oh and I forgot to say that I would remove the finger food when they become chunks, so only leave safe sizes/shapes available.

Gagging is a very typical stage of learning to manipulate food around the mouth.
Choking is a different matter, but pretty rare, ad you have the first aid knowledge to deal with it.

Keep going with finger foods. You don't need to do blw, but moving to lumpy food and finger foods isn't something to be frightened of.

Keep going with finger foods. You don't need to do blw, but moving to lumpy food and finger foods isn't something to be frightened of

this. Don’t do it, you don’t have to. Keep up with increasing the textures and using some finger foods. I never did blw, my sister did and both sets of kids (now primary) eat exactly the same.

Oh I came on here to recommend following Solid starts too.
BLW is super scary but it really helps baby develop their muscles in their mouth and jaw which then helps speech development.
I did a mix of puree and BLW, also maybe try giving baby the spoon with puree etc ( it's very very messy but I found it worked)

If blw doesn't feel right don't do it. You know your specific baby better than anyone and what might be the 'right' way to do things generally, may not be right for your particular baby. Increase textures gradually if that is what your instinct tells you.

Babies have a gag reflex far further down their tongues than adults. It protects them from choking. So for an adult you'd gag when you're close to choking, babies gag when food goes a bit far back in their mouths but they're not on the verge of choking.

Gagging = retching sounds. Choking = silent.

It's hard not to be alarmed by gagging but it's part of them learning to move food around in their mouths. Sussing out those muscles in the tongue and jaw also helps with speech.

Think of the texture and shape of choking hazards like cherry tomatoes and cocktail sausages. Firm and round. That's what would block a windpipe. Softened sweet potato? Not so much. Cough against a cherry tomato and it stays firm and lodged. Cough against cold sweet potato and it would smush up and break apart. Obviously you don't want it to get that far, but you get the idea.

Cut it into shapes bigger or smaller than that cherry tomato diameter if you like.

If she's gagging more than once or twice I'd dial it back.

Finger food I like the wafers or the third of banana

I didn't do BLW. I was too nervous and couldn't bring myself to give DS finger at 6months so we did purees and just moved quickly to textures. When we had our older boys BLW wasn't really promoted, but there is an 11yr age gap so I felt more comfortable doing what we knew from before.

I will say though that the issue was my anxiety levels, and I agree with the evidence around babies being able to manipulate food round mouths well, and they do have an excellent gag reflex. He's 15month now and eats what we do without issue however isn't as developed with hand to mouth coordination as my friends DD who followed BLW (with no incidents).

As PP suggested could you do a mix of spoon feeding and BLW until you feel a bit more confident? Whichever way you choose as long as baby is fed and happy it's not a problem!

Thank you! I think I’ll go with what I feel comfortable with and move slowly with textures and finger foods.

Gagging is really important for learning how to safely move food to the front of the mouth. With purées the get no opportunity to practice this, and is harder to master when they eventually get finger foods. So earlier the better - keep giving fingers foods and they will stop gagging sooner

You don't have to do baby led weaning. My son was mostly on pureed/mashed food until 10-11 months, gradually making it thicker and lumpier. Would try him with finger food from time to time to see if he was ready. Then suddenly he preferred finger food over spoon feeding and switched to that. He eats great now.