Was reading this news on 9mo baby choking

[katerose2022]

And feeling a bit confused... are they supposed to be eating solids at this stage or not? Our baby boy is also 9mo with just two front teeth but we've been giving him finger food...

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c3gqqprv7y3o.amp

www.nhs.uk/start-for-life/baby/weaning/what-to-feed-your-baby/from-around-6-months/#lumpy

BLW isn't a synonym for finger-food - it's a whole ethos. As pp have said, realistically most parents do a bit of both. And agree that choking is always a risk at any age. But still they must feel it was preventable.

Solid foods, lumps, finger foods are all fine in general at nine months.

That doesn't mean they were ok for this baby.

But even if the nursery gave him lumpy food he wasn't familiar with and he choked on it, that doesn't necessarily mean they were negligent.

Choking can happen to anyone at any time. When I was little, our school chaplin died choking on a fish bone at his niece's wedding.

It's a horrendous case.

But even if the nursery gave him lumpy food he wasn't familiar with and he choked on it, that doesn't necessarily mean they were negligent

This would be true if the mother hadn't asked and they hadn't agreed to only give the baby pureed food.

It's a very sad accident. They are perfectly safe to be having normal food at that age with correct preparation and adequate supervision. Hard to know the full context from a short news article.

My DC are 17 and 14, the younger one got the hang of bigger chunks of food/more "normal" food at a much younger age - I was amazed at what they could chomp on with very few teeth.

DD (now 17) was probably on 2nd stage baby food/purees at 9 months because she was fussy and didn't seem to like more textures (she still v fussy)

So I think it is provably dependent on baby and how parents have organised weaning.

Unbelievably sad for baby, parents and nursery staff as would be very distressing.

I mean it happened at the nursery. She should blame them!

Babies can choke in the loving care of their parents, sadly. The nursery may well be at fault, but it may also be just a horrible accident. The inquest will determine this, I don't think there's enough in the public domain yet for us to know.

No - the nursery didn’t follow her instructions so they are at fault. Babies develop at different rates and he wasn’t ready for non puréed food which his parents made them aware of - they were negligent and caused harm.

But most 9 month olds can handle lumps no problem - and if they have no health concerns they should be eating food with lumps.

If the baby couldn't have lumps because of a medical condition, then yes they were negligent. But if it was just the parents' wishes then I don't think it would be negligent to give a normal healthy food type to a normal healthy baby, any more negligent than it would be to allow them to sleep longer than the parents wanted at nap time.

But as in my post above we don't know the full story yet.

His mother is mumsnetter. I remember her threads on either the TTC or pregnancy boards regarding her other child(ren) conceived after Olivers death. Her posts about Oliver were heartbreaking.

Regardless of whether the nursery was at fault, as a parent how do you ever move on from that, and being able to trust a care provider to look after other children whilst you go to work.

RIP Oliver, and thinking of you Zoe today xx

Well it's their fault. They gave him lumpy food he wasn't used to.

There is no should. The baby hasn't read the book.

the parents had valid concerns about his swallowing ability and made the nursery aware. The nursery are at fault.

That really doesn't mean it's their fault. We should be careful about assigning blame with limited information, especially when discussing something as devastating as the death of a child.

They may be found to be to blame for giving him the food, or for not supervising properly, or for inadequate first aid or probably a few thousand other potential reasons.

Or they may be entirely blameless.

We can't possibly know and it's not fair to speculate.

If you read all the facts, it's the nursery's fault. More will come out later in the inquest.

It’s very clear. They are at fault. The parents stated strictly only puréed food, for safety reasons. The baby then choked on non puréed food - the nursery are to blame it’s extremely simple and clear cut. Really no different to for example a parent saying not to give Their child a food they were allergic to

There's nothing in the article that says there were safety concerns about him eating or swallowing. Not having had lumps in the past and only having two teeth aren't reasons to only give pureed food. Maybe more will emerge and it will turn out that he was under medical care for his swallow, in which case yes of course the nursery were negligent, but there's nothing in that article to say so.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't want my DC at a nursery that didn't follow my wishes about something as fundamental as food, but giving food the parents don't agree with isn't in the same league as giving something unsafe or an allergen.

I'm going to leave it there because I don't want it to seem like I'm criticising grieving parents, I remember their comments around the change in ratios and really admire them.

I just think we should just all be very very careful about saying someone is responsible for the death of a child when we don't have all the facts.

There was a massive push for BLW when my DD was weaning and it is not suitable for some babies. I instinctively felt it was wrong for DD, but allowed my feeling to be overridden by the pressure for BLW. She had a horrible choking incident.

As she got older it became apparent that she had some slight development delays and speech delay. I think parents, particularly the main caregiver, will know things about their babies that can't be quantified, but should be respected by professionals.

Have some compassion. It’s every parents worst nightmare.

The article started that the parents said ‘he wasn’t able to chew that made us extra cautious’

No babies chew though, they gum and mouth the food. The article also says the little one had no history of choking. We're not doctors and we don't have enough to go on here to determine whether or not the nursery could have reasonably viewed the food they gave him as suitable.

Like I said, I'm not saying the nursery wasn't to blame, maybe they were, and if they are I hope they face consequences for that. I'm just saying we shouldn't be making a call on that yet.

Mostly I hope the poor parents get some answers and some closure, as someone who waved both babies off to nursery five days a week is somehow both my worst nightmare and unimaginable.

Up to what point should a nursery respect a parent's wishes if they are not developmentally appropriate? Unless there was a medical issue or a developmental delay then I wouldn't have thought just puree was appropriate for a 9 month old.

How would you go about working out what medical issue you were dealing with in the 12 weeks between the usual timeframe for starting solids and the nursery giving them regardless of your instructions?

I mean, It'd take a few weeks before you realized there was a problem and it wasn't just a temporary thing and then it'd take three weeks to get a scheduled gp appointment. Then they'd tell you to come back in a few weeks if things hadn't improved. By this point you'd be lucky if they'd sent a letter for a referral.

The solids starts all helps with this