Finger foods just slip out of baby's hands

[cirillaofcintra]

Hi all, my DD is 6.5 months and we are roughly following the weaning plan in 'How to wean your baby' which is a mix of finger foods and purees/mashed food.

However I am finding that most of the finger foods suggested just slip out of her hands/fingers and she can rarely get a good grip on them to get them into her mouth properly. They have to be soft enough to be safe for her, but this means they are slippery
she can't pick them up/hold them and they just get smooshed all over the high chair. She then gets frustrated, shouts/cries and wants to be picked up.

We've tried avocado, banana, courgette, potato sticks, swede, cucumber. She can hold broccoli OK.

I haven't seen this mentioned in any of the BLW guides, will she just get better at gripping/holding as time goes on?

Should have mentioned, she is great at picking up and holding plastic toys and other objects and putting them in her mouth so is weaning ready in that respect, it's just the foods are so slippery.

Does your DD easily grasp other objects?

Xpost sorry

Are the pieces you're giving her quite small?

@rolypolydoly

Does your DD easily grasp other objects?

Yes! Very easily. Maybe I am cooking the foods too much? But the guide says they should be easily smooshable between finger and thumb. So how do you stop them disintegrating/slipping in baby's grip.

Have you tried roasted fingers of potato? Or chips even?
Roast carrot till it’s not completely mush - cooked to how you’d eat roast potato or parsnips.

This is how babies are.

They’re only starting to develop fine motor skills at this stage.

She’ll become better at it as she gets older. Otherwise all the older children, teenagers and adults everywhere would still be sitting smushing avocado around when they eat...

Before ‘baby led weaning’ became a thing and you had to read books to tell you the ‘right’ way to do things you just fed your babies some food with a spoon, let them hold a spoon too and gave them bits of food to hold/smush/suck on to practice. It all came together just fine, and it’ll come together just fine for you too.

A slice off the nobbly end of a bread loaf was a huge treat and easy to hold. It was home made whole meal bread though so fairly dense.

You could try giving her some pre-loaded spoons along with the finger foods

@rolypolydoly

Are the pieces you're giving her quite small?

No, big bits, at minimum the size and shape of an adult finger.

At 6.5 months that's exactly how it should be. She's practicing! She will develop the skills over time. Very slippery things like avocado you can roll in oats at one end to give more purchase. But honestly at this age it's about putting things on the tray and letting her smush them about ☺️

@Nnique

This is how babies are.

They’re only starting to develop fine motor skills at this stage.

She’ll become better at it as she gets older. Otherwise all the older children, teenagers and adults everywhere would still be sitting smushing avocado around when they eat...

Before ‘baby led weaning’ became a thing and you had to read books to tell you the ‘right’ way to do things you just fed your babies some food with a spoon, let them hold a spoon too and gave them bits of food to hold/smush/suck on to practice. It all came together just fine, and it’ll come together just fine for you too.

Thanks, I think I am worrying over nothing really, I just hadn't seen anyone else have this problem and am getting a bit sad/frustrated for her seeing her struggle to get her slippy banana half, which she clearly loves, to her mouth before it breaks up and slips onto the floor.

I know it'll come right in the end - thanks for some much needed perspective!

You can buy choppers with a wiggly edge (eg to make crinkle cut chips) and cut fruit and veg with it to give them better grip. My children are 10 and 7 and love using it still (now they use it to cut their own snacks!).

Completely normal OP, I remember worrying about mine not getting enough food because it never ended up in their mouth. My children did well with those mesh feeders on Amazon for things like banana, but they were a pain to clean after.

Yes to the crinkle cut knife, we just got a cheap one on Amazon and it made mango, avocado etc so much easier.

At that age, go big, the bigger the better. The mango pit is actually a brilliant thing for them to work on!

Give Solid starts a follow on instagram

Excellent advice on how to start weaning with solids

Sounds very normal. But you can roll slippy things like banana and avo in LSA.... helps them to grip it

For things like pears, mango, avocado I just used to take a whole one and peel some of the skin off one end so it was easy to hold and ds would just gum bits off

Crinkle cutter will change your life :)

My 2 DC loved toast fingers, eggy bread fingers, baby rice cakes & rusks.
Though not very nutritious my kids also learnt to handle finger foods with the occasional Jaffa Cake.
Cheesy wotsits are easy to hold & just melt as they're learning to chew & feed themselves. Obviously not a full packet, just 5 or 6 to build their confidence.

For things like banana I would give her some to play feed with to learn those co ordination and grasping skills and also feed some mashed on a spoon to satisfy the enjoyment part of the process. I think it is perfectly possible to combine finger food play with stopping the poor child getting frustrated because they can’t eat something they enjoy.

With bananas are you splitting them in 3 fingers shaped pieces or slicing? They naturally come apart into 3 segments which aren’t as slippery as cutting them up. Was amazed when I learnt this!

Cook it less - gums are hard enough to chomp on stuff that has a bit of bite.
There it a trick with bananas - cut in half so you have a circular end, then gentle squeeze that end, and you will see the banana start to split in to 3 parts. Pull those apart, and give her one. No cut slipped ends to make life difficult!

Like this

No real advice just to say we've just started weaning and my little one is the same - smooshes them into smaller bits, then making me nervous as HV told me to make sure they were finger sized. I believe hope it will become easier as time goes on :)