9 month old choked a few times on toast

[Cafeaulait27]

Proper choking not gagging, he goes silent and red with his mouth open and looks scared.

I do a mix of mashed on a spoon and finger foods for his weaning, we started at 5 months but didn’t start finger foods until 6 months. Spoon fed he is fine, and most finger foods like cooked carrot, sweet potato, broccoli are fine but really struggling with toast at the moment. I don’t know if he’s just going through a phase because he used to be ok with toast, but recently he’s shoving loads in and sucking it for ages so it goes all pasty and then he chokes on it. I have to get him out of the high chair in a panic and he seems to clear it himself, I haven’t had to do back hits yet. I don’t want to freak him out and I don’t want to give him purées forever but I’m scared now.

ive also found that he sucks whole finger food pieces of fruit out of his fingers and into his mouth which luckily hasn’t gone in his airway yet, they just go straight down his throat fast which shocks him.

he loves his food and I want to be relaxed with all this but I am worried. He will go to nursery at 1 year and I’m scared of what they might give him. They tend to do like afternoon tea in the afternoon with sandwiches and I haven’t even tried bread on him yet, only toast.

how on Earth do I get past this phase? Is this normal?

Are you giving fingers of toast, I used to break it down into bite sized pieces at that age and when they were confident with that I moved to quarters. Solid Starts has some really good advice

It really does sound like a variant of gagging, not acute choking (if his airway was obstructed he wouldn’t be able to clear it himself, would remain silent then turn blue).

Make the toast soft and squishy by adding butter, olive oil or soft toppings like avocado. Cut into fingers it shouldn’t cause too much gagging and can easily be mushed up by his gums. Dry hard crunchy toast I imagine would cause issues more often. It’s so scary to have them gag badly
on food, it’s not something I’ll forget in a hurry.

Ho @bloodywhitecat thank you I will try small pieces, yes I’m doing fingers at the moment, I thought it would help him have more control and to start with he used to be really careful with it but now he’s got worse strangely. I don’t know if he feels more confident so is not concentrating as much or thinks it’d be fun to shove it all in but it’s really scaring me 😩

I feel like there’s loads of pressure to be a ‘chill BLW mum’ and I’m trying to appear that way to not worry him, but things like this happen and I just don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. I see people around town giving their babies crackers in their prams and not even watching them - I haven’t even given him a cracker yet as I read they’re a choking hazard.

I want him to be prepared for nursery and have tried lots of foods but I feel like it’s so hard at the moment, I know the only way he will be good at this stuff is to continue to offer it but something like this happens and I just don’t know how we’ll get there x

@TheWrongAllmanBrother from what I’ve read they can clear it themselves sometimes, but I think usually it’s by coughing that they can do that. He didn’t do that, so maybe it was just a bad gag… either way I was terrified, the panic in his eyes I feel like I’ve failed him 😢

I’m giving him fingers of toasted sourdough with a thin layer of avocado. When he had the incident today he had been sucking on it for ages and I think he put too much in and made it too soft. At the moment I’m doing quite wide fingers about 2 fingers wide, maybe I should make them thinner? Thank you x

I also really don’t understand what to do about finger food of fruit, it was mango where he sucked it up and down his throat, it was adult finger length!

If it's just toast, just stop giving him toast for a while???

@parrotonthesofa I’m asking because surely he needs to learn to eat toast… just stopping giving it to him isn’t going to solve the problem long term.

i find it so strange that some people feel the urge to be rude on these forums, if you think I’m pathetic just scroll on by, no need to write that. And before you say you weren’t being rude - you were. A polite way to say it would’ve been: ‘my advice would be to perhaps not give him toast for a while’

it’s not difficult

It's such a minefield and you are right to find ways to introduce foods safely, I can't recommend that Solid Starts website enough, it has helped me enormously in the past.

@bloodywhitecat that is so useful, thank you! I had no idea to change the toast from fingers to little pieces at around 9 months x

I see no rudeness OP.

stopping giving him toast for a while is a worthwhile suggestion. Reintroduce it when he’s a bit bigger and he may handle it better,. Or not, there’s no reason he has to eat toast at all, whatever suits you. I’m imagining toasted sourdough to be quite rough and chunky, needing a fair amount of chew, so maybe don’t toast it, go for a soft wholemeal, milk roll, tortilla, or cornbread.

I think the advice not to give him toast is actually quite sensible. Toast is quite dry and crumby and he's 9 months old, many babies are still mostly on milk at this stage, so surely eating things that make him choke isn't a great idea for now. There's no 'must' about eating that right now, people did used to feed babies puree for a much longer time and most adults can eat solid food!

My other suggestion is tongue-tie because your son sounds like he's not able to stop the food going down easily like fruit lumps. I would have no hesitation to make things mushier, but still with texture at this stage.

Always ask yourself "how many adults do I know who can't eat toast because they weren't given it at 9m of age?"
I didn't give mine toast until well over 1.5yrs, I saw no reason to and had the same choking anxiety (didn't have the nerve for BLW and became an unapologetic spoon-feeder as a result 😅) He's over 3 now and eats well.

I never did finger foods the way you're 'supposed' to do finger foods i.e the long strips for precisely that reason, he'd suck the whole piece in. I did and still do, for the most part, cut into little squares that aren't possible to choke on and give to him one at a time so he can't stuff loads in. Something like fresh brown soda bread is nice as it's crumbly, not sticky..

my issue isn’t with the suggestion to stop giving toast, it’s the wording of it, it was very much written as though I’m somehow stupid/pathetic.

rather than saying ‘just stop giving toast then????’

it would’ve been nicer to say ‘my advice would be to stop giving toast for a while’

its not rocket science but some people just seem to love being mean on forums.

I would avoid toast for a few weeks just for your own stress levels. Learning to chew and swallow is a transferable skill so it won't matter if DC misses out on toast for a bit if they are otherwise having a good range of textures. You can reintroduce it once you're feeling more confident in your DC's abilities.
As for the infographic about the sizes of bread to cut, I think the smaller pieces between 9-12m is to aid advancing their pincer grip rather than for eating/choking purposes. They develop a love of picking out and eating peas/sweetcorn one at a time from their meals at this age for the same reason.

I don't think it was majorly mean- your child is choking on food, and it's reasonable to suggest cutting it much smaller or mushing it up or not carrying on- the same is clear for the fruit, if he's swallowing a whole finger's worth of mango at a time, then he's just not ready to chew bits off.

Do you think he could be tongue-tied as I suggested? That stops babies using their tongues to stop the food from suddenly going down or moving it around their mouths. Just an idea.

@FarFarFarAndAway that’s an interesting point about tongue tie. I was told he doesn’t have it at birth but he couldn’t breastfeed - he tried his best at sucking and I got little BF support in hospital other than ‘nose to nipple’ and ‘skin to skin’ and eventually he started to close his mouth right whenever I put my nipple near his mouth to feed. So we ended up on formula because he was going to die otherwise. Wonder if I ought to get it checked again?

having said that he did used to do better with toast, and does well with things like carrots and sweet potato, and roughly mashed veg/meat/fruit etc.

I think I’m wanting to make sure he’s prepared for nursery, as I can’t control what they give him (they have said that we can specify if we want everything mashed etc but I don’t feel I can say ‘well he can have this mashed but not this and this is ok as a finger food but not this’ etc it seems a bit much) x

@BlazingRufus haha that is a good point!

@Rowen32 thank you that is really helpful, I think I should probably change my approach and do smaller pieces for a while and have a few weeks off toast.

this weaning stuff is hard!

It's just your description of your child eating was exactly like my first with tongue-tie, don't know how she survived! It created a heart-shaped tongue in her mouth. I only realised all the breastfeeding problems were due to that when I tried weaning and moved to solid food, even puree was difficult at times.

Another idea might be he's really hungry right now and so cramming stuff in! So, you could get him filled up on easier food with a couple of harder items towards the end.

I wouldn't worry so much about nursery, they can always default to mashed up for a month or so and then move back to finger food and if he has finger foods at home, it will all work out. I would be reluctant to feed chunky fruit or toast given what you've described at this point, I bet within a few weeks it'll have all changed again and nurseries will be able to cope with that if you speak with them.

You're welcome. If it makes it any easier for you I didn't mash anything just cut everything up, fruit and veg included.. That might help with nursery if there's not different rules for different foods. Also, remember for the first year they're still meant to be getting their main nutrition from milk and it gets easier too when they get teeth and you can teach them to bite!

I wouldn't worry about nursery. Mine were eating pretty much everything we did by a year.

it's a long time ago now but my DS was like this at that age - gagged on EVERYTHING that wasn't puree. He did it with me, he did it at nursery. I was at my wits end and frequently in tears. Even mashed up shepherd's pie - I wouldn't have dared try him with toast or bread!

We were even referred to a speech therapist to look at how his mouth worked. She concluded that he was just slow to 'get it' and wasn't attempting to chew, and advised to feed him what we knew he wouldn't struggle with and just very, very gradually add different textures.

It was a phase. He grew out of it. Just was still on puree when other babies/toddlers his age were scoffing down sandwiches and I felt like a failure.

But it passed. He started chewing properly and eating normally. Looking back, I was more concerned about what the books and HVs and 'experts' were saying he should have been eating at that age than what he could actually manage.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be mean!!!!!
I just meant stop giving it for a while if that's the only thing he's struggling with. It doesn't matter if he doesn't eat toast, I know lots of people that don't.
But again, I'm sorry you found my tone rude, it really wasn't my intention!

@parrotonthesofa i didn’t read your post as mean or rude at all.