BLW - 6 month old gagging and vomiting

[totatola]

My little boy has just turned 6 months old so I have started baby led weaning with him this week. He's taken to it really well and will taste pretty much everything put in front of him, often biting off quite large piece which he tries to chew. The problem is that this often makes him gag and at least once a day causes him to vomit. The gagging I can just about cope with as I am aware that this is a safety mechanism and that the gag reflex is further forward in babies but it is the vomiting that I really don't like. I usually offer him solids about an hour after a breastfeed but he still seems to bring quite a lot of milk up when he vomits.

So now I'm not sure what to do for the best. Do I carry on offering him solids as usual and just deal with the mess when he is sick? Or should I tone it back to maybe only offering once a day for now until he can deal with it better? For what it's worth the gagging and vomiting doesn't seem to really upset him it's just messy and I hate that he brings his milk up. Should I just breastfeed him again at the end of the meal if this happens?

He seems to be really enjoying trying solid food and is definitely swallowing some, it's just such a pity that he's gagging so much. Any idea how long his gag reflex is likely to be this sensitive?

Thanks

Can you cut the food into bite size pieces, that way you are controlling how big each bite is

This is the exact reason i have never done baby-led weaning. Never had this issue with purees. Why don't you try some purees just to see if there's a difference? By seven months he'll be on lumps and finger food anyway.. They all end up chewing food within a few months anyway!

My dc4 was like this. I weaned him a bit differently I did a combination of finger foods and purees at the beginning. Even the purees were making him vomit. I never had a problem with my older three children I literally threw food at them and they caught it
Could you try mashing with a fork at first? Some children just take a bit longer to get the hang of it.

It was the same with mine! She gagged and womited for months, from the smallest pieces. Constant vomiting really got me down eventually also like you i worried about loosing milk intake. Eventually started purees at 10months and we built up from there, kind of. She is nearly 13months now, has 6 teeth but still eats very little- seems to like her milk too much
Vomiting while trying out foods became very rare from about 11 months though.
I was kind of dissapointed about purees as BLW seems to be intuitive, fun way to feed but it really wasn't working for her. I got a lot advice to check if she has tongue tie which apparently could be the cause but we live in a country which doesn't support tt snips. Also she never had any problems breastfeeding so assuming doesn't have tt anyway.
I think you should keep an open mind about the purees and for a time being don't try to feed him food that often. There's no benefit from loosing liquids and nutrition via frequent vomiting!

I had this with DD the first few times I gave her finger food, and I just dialled it back a bit: fork mashed sweet potato and Ready Brek and stuff like that for a week or so till she got a bit better at moving food around in her mouth. I'm trying again with finger food now and she's already less gaggy. I don't think there's anything wrong with easing your way into finger food - you don't need to resort to months of puree if you don't want to (nothing wrong with it, but if you'd prefer baby led you get there via a slow build-up!)