BLW and very delicate gag reflex

[PeachyCandle]

DD is 6.5mo, EBF until the 6 month mark. Healthy, very enthusiastic about trying food. She much prefers BLW but the second the tiniest molecule of food is caught in her throat she gags (I know this is normal), and then retches, and then vomits. This can be a tiny bit or a whole lot, depending on how much milk is in her stomach. The poor thing ends meals with less in her stomach than when she started! I obviously make sure she’s not stuffed with milk before meals but it doesn’t stop the actual issue of the retching and vomiting. Will she grow out of this? Should I persist with some purées until it settles down?

@PeachyCandle

Have you done purées and BLW? Because if so, this could be causing her to gag. I know many people mix the two but the hardcore BLWers would say it's dangerous to mix because feeding purées teaches baby to swallow and BLW teaches them to chew then swallow. So she could be gagging because she's confusing the food for a purée and trying to swallow it straight away rather than chewing. Does that make sense?

The advice from BLW groups would be to stop all purées and food for two weeks to let her gag reflex 'reset' from the purées, then introduce food again. I know that a lot of MN tend to advocate doing a bit of both purées and BLW but it could be worth a try.

Thank you for replying teaandbiscuits

It does make total sense! She has only had a couple of purees, with the vast majority of her ‘solids’ being BLW. She loves little bits of yoghurt off a spoon but I let her control that herself. We’ve had a couple of better days - I think partly it was my fault for not leaving enough of a gap between a breastfeed and then food, and I’ve also found saying ‘om nom nom!’ to her in an exaggerated fashion helps her, sort of reminds her what she’s doing and encourages her to move the food round her mouth, rather than it staying in a part of her mouth which is more likely to trigger the gagging? Maybe? It seemed to help anyway!

Fingers crossed we’ve turned a corner. We had 3 full outfit changes one day last weekend while she was eating!