6.5 months old baby gagging on food

[imme]

So today has been our third attempt at weaning my 6.5 months old DD and it's not going very well. She does not seem to know what to do with the food in her mouth and she gagged and spat everything out again. I tried both finger food, i.e. carrot sticks, and mashed up carrot. She does seem very keen to eat, grabbed the spoon and fed herself and also grabbed the finger food and put it into her mouth.
I stopped when she gagged and vomited her milk feed as well.
She has always been a very puky baby, bringing up lots of milk, often via spectacular projectile vomiting.
Should I just carry on as we are? It feels like we are not getting anywhere..

One of my twins was like this. We did baby led weaning and I had read all the books about expecting gagging and to ignore it etc, but she used to gag on every single thing that went in her mouth! It was a nightmare as she often brought up the previous milk feed with it. She too had been a very pukey baby.

I found the Jill Rapley BLW book quite good on the issue and so I largely ignored the gagging. My daughter's gag reflex gradually reduced and it got a lot better a couple of months into weaning.

Good luck!

Thanks for your reply. Reassuring that others have had similar issues. She is my second child and my son weaned like a dream and was lapping up the bolognese by 7 months. Maybe I'll have a look at BLW and let her get it in her own time. Thanks again

We have this and haven't found a solution but have started doing food before milk so if she gags we don't have a whole milk feed come back up!

We had this as well - he was a big hungry baby but couldn't eat as much as he wanted without throwing up. We kep everything really smooth for a little but longer than the recommended guidelines and over time it seemed to improve. Having said that he still gags quite a lot and he's nearly 7

This is normal, they are learning to swallow. Most calories should come from milk up to 9 months so plenty of time to get the hang of swallowing. This age is about fun and food exploration

I had this with DS3 and it was a sensitive gag reflex due to a tongue tie. Apparently the tongue desensitises the mouth moving around in utero but when it's tied, it can't do that.

We ended up seeing a speech and language therapist but there wasn't a lot she could recommend.

He was a really bad case though, he was over a year before he could eat even mashed banana.

She did tell me not to keep pushing it with more textured foods, keep it as smooth as possible and try every couple of weeks with something a bit more lumpy. Also use things like Organix carrot sticks that melt in the mouth but he was quite a bit older then.

There was a handout, I'll see if I can find it online but in the end, they'll outgrow it. Some babies at 9 months or so, others later on.

This was the handout. There was more, but this is the main bit of it.

I have this problem too and a bit worried as my son is very active and dropping down the centile charts for weight. I feel he would benefit from eating food but it just makes him sick. All we've managed is very thin purees of baby rice mixed with broccoli/ spinach, or yoghurt. Everything else has been too hard for him.