Anyone got tips for managing a gagger?

[Saacsmum]

I know that there maybe medical reasons behind why my boy is gagging (for those who know us) but I know it happens in other babies. He gags on all finger foods and often on small lumps. He still only eats about a cup of food in total a day and is nine months. We have had some limited success with very ripe pear and very soft peices of kumara but he gags daily and about 5 times now I have had to do the back slap routine to help him. How did others manage gagging and when did your little ones grow out of it, figure out how to chew and swallow?

how old is he?

sorry just reread - he is 9 mths

what does your hv say?

Saacsmum, my ds1 now nearly 3 and a half used to gag on lumps all the time, at least once or twice a day. I kept giving him lumpier pureed food then when he was almost 17/18mths he started eating pasta and bread and butter and it was very slow but by the age of two he was totally OK with chewing. I'm not quite sure what the problem was. When I saw the dr he said ds would probably grow out of it.

Ds2, now nearly a year and a half is better than ds1 but is also slow with chewing. I now just give him a bit of whatever I or ds1 is having to give him more chewing practice, but do still put food through the blender to make sure he gets enough calories.

My attitude is that I'll just let him go at his own pace. Having been through it all with ds1 I think that he will catch up and be eating proper meals when he's ready.

My nine month old is pretty much the same. He is still eating food for a 4 montgh old and gags on everything else. He wakes at night through hunger so has an extra bottle then, but it is worrying. I offfer him everythjing, but it allways up unswallowed. My no nonsense mum recommends feeding him outside ( for the mess!) and to just persevere. I find mashed potato is quite good as it is quite dense without being lumpy. At the end of the day, keep offering the food, your baby won;t starve, I worried about my 5 yr old daughter too, and she eventually managed, just relax I think...

Dd has a narrow gullet and huge tonsils (apparently nothing to worry about - some of them just do), so along with frequent tonsillitis we had a lot of gagging & generally then throwing up. I don't think she was reliably out of it till towards 2, really, and even now (four and a half) we have to remind her to eat carefully.

We dealt with it by not advancing her foodwise too fast - ie, ignoring any stuff about how toddlers "need" textured/finger foods, and always having a spare bib and bowl on hand so's to catch what came up. Otherwise the problem was so obviously just mechanical that we didn't really worry. She got pretty used to it all so went on being cheery even after each event.

It's worth noting whether your child is gagging, or choking - if they're breathing fine, then it's just gagging, and nothing to worry about, while choking is much more worrisome, obviously.

Try not to worry. My nearly 5 year old was like that and I went on pureeing food for him for ages- my father in law said "when is he going to eat proper food?" which helped!!
He did have a very limited range of food he would tolerate ie: soft stuff like baby pasta stars etc and very gradually built up to "normal textures"
I found relaxing about it helped and time and development too. He still isn't keen on meaty textures but will eat it as DS2 20 mths stuffs it down! so you see we are all different.
Letting him feed himself also helped as he can control the rate of eating. Good luck.