Weaning 6 month old

[mumof5daughters]

Hello I'm new to mums net and an older mum (I'm 40) to 5 girls! Eldest being 22 then 18,15,9 and my new one just 6 months so a lot has changed since i last did any weaning!
She has been having purees and loving them but when can i introduce finger food to her? I've always been worried about choking with all of mine but i know you can introduce some finger foods about 6 months. Any advice on when and what i can start to give her? :)

A baby aged 6 months can eat anything at all (people who follow baby led weaning serve up a regular dinner to their baby at 6 months as their first food and they just crack on and eat it), although if you've chosen to wean before the recommended 6 months and have been giving purees you might want to speak to your HV about where to go from there? You might need to build up the consistency from thin puree to solids.

At the beginning I loved those sticks that melt in the mouth, I loved avocado, really soft parsnip, carrot, broccoli!

I've just started weaning my 6 month old and I give her a bit of everything. Slices of avacado, broccoli, toast etc. She just gets in with it and spits out what she doesn't want.

When my others were little you were told to be really careful so i wasn't sure what to give and if 6 months is to early for finger food but that's all really helpful thankyou :)

Baby will probably spit it back out if its too big or they dont want it. The point is to get them used to textures and a 'chewing' motion, taking 'bites', etc

My son wasnt interested at all in feeding himself until recently (9 months). Now I do a combo of spoon feeding and BLW. Dont worry if your baby just isnt interested in feeding themselves. They all get there! After reading loads of threads on MN about this I assumed all babies magically picked food up and fed themselves at 6 months. But no....

I read they perfect their gagging reflex by practising 🤷🏼‍♀️ so it might sound like they’re choking but they’re not necessarily as long as they’re eating something age appropriate. Had a few coughing/gagging moments where I’ve internally panicked but she’s been fine! We went from purées (quite early from 5 months) to the thicker pouches or homemade blended food with slightly lumpier texture when she was 6/7 months. Mashed banana, mashed raspberries. The kiddie carrot puffs /melty sticks etc. Now she’s almost 8 months I can give her scrambled eggs, thicker porridge, weetabix, she also likes little bread squares (no crusts) with Philadelphia or dairylea. Sometimes she doesn’t want to be spoon fed at all and wants to do it herself (miss independent) so even with softer stuff like porridge she has fun fist grabbing it and shoving it in lol. It’s messy as hell but she enjoys it and has really good hand/mouth coordination now. She pincer grips her thumb and forefinger to eat the melty sticks now too. I just let her try it herself but never unattended just in case!

Thanks for all your help I'm going to try DD with some cooked broccoli and carrot batons this evening and see how she gets on with picking them up and eating!! Hopefully she likes it :)