finger food

[mummysue]

can anyone help and advise this worrier of a mother.i have a one year old and would like to know what finger foods i should give.at the moment i give her tiny pieces of everything as im so afraid she will choke.what size pieces should she be eating .
yes im a first time mom .Also i stilllllll havent put her in her own room,its all ready for her but i just cant do it......how can i make it easier for me

i'm a first time mum too, so not 100% sure as it depends on individual child a lot of the time, i.e how many teeth etc. All i can say is i give my daughter half a banana to munch on as part of her breakfast,( she is 10 months nearly and has six front teeth). I then watch her like a hawk for any choking etc, which unfortunately is inevitable to some degree as babies progress from smaller pieces to self feeding but if you read up on baby first aid it can give you peace of mind whilst you watch her. also there are courses on first aid which your local health visitor should be able to tell you about. I also give her thin slivers of toast, rusks etc. if you give her very soft food cut up into small chunks (say 0.5cm)it's less risky, and also things like cheese, carrot and apple are good for self feeding if grated.

You could try lots of different things, I have given DS things like raisins, biscuits, bread/toast, crumpet, cheese, cucumber, cherry tomatoes since he was around 7 ish months. Sometimes you just have to be brave and go for it!

My dd (11 months) likes the Cow & Gate biscuits (both sweet and savoury), raisins, small pieces of apple/carrot/etc.
I supervise her, but she learned very quickly to cough out any food that was causing a problem.
She has never choked as such and is quite confident with food.
I cook her meals of veg and chicken and leave it quite chunky now as she copes with it

did you make your own baby food for her? purees etc? although i suppose jarred would work just as well

i used to spread purees (sweet and sour) on toast soldiers and give that to my dd', they mostly sucked the puree off and then sucked the toast but they really enjoyed it

i would recommend Jennie Maizels book 'Finger Food for Babies and Toddlers' for easy to make recipes and hints and tips

here

i found ds never choked as such, if he did get big bits of food too far back he'd sort of hawk it out again, nothing like proper choking. he always thought this terribly funny too.

thanks to all of you,i will try the suggestions and let you know how we get on

sometimes they do gag on things, its all part of learning to chew and swallow tho. Not something to be terrified of, just be awarde of and help them out if they need to be lent over or need you to stcik finger in mouth to scoop out teh offending article.
Boy started on finger food at 5.5 m/o with big rings of pear or cucumber to gnaw on. then at 6 m/o moved onto half cream cracker, bread sticks little chunks of chease , banana etc. 7 m/o toast fingers and squares. hes had teeth from 4 m/o so the gnawing may have been earlier than many manage that.