Finger foods and choking - advice please

[EllieG]

Right - to all you BLWers - how the hell do you cope with the choking? I am not BLW, but trying to give DD finger foods with at least one meal a day - toast, little corn things, rice cakes, fingers of cheese, banana etc etc but apart from the icky corn things, (they just seem to melt everywhere), she chokes on all the rest and it scares the beejesus out of me! A couple of times she has gagged so hard she's been sick and once she really had trouble getting a piece of whatever it was up, and really scared herself, and me. Is this normal? It really frightens me but I don't want her on mush til she's 18.

Am I doing the wrong thing? She is just over 6 months old.

Totally normal.

I didn't do the whole BLW weaning myself but a mixture of the two until ds refused to eat from a spoon at 8 months and thanks to the advice of the ladies here I just gave him finger foods.

He has had a couple of choking episodes - one of the first being banana which he required a good few bangs on the back to get up. It is really frightening but I familiarised myself with baby first-aid in case something did happen which made me more calm about the whole thing. Now I think, even if he's choking, as long as he's breathing, it's ok. You could maybe go to a baby first aid course.

I cut up things quite long and thin or stick-like to start off with. Honestly ds is still not good with rice cakes at 1 year old (still no teeth) and started off with soft foods like pasta and well-cooked veggies.

Aitch's blog is a good resource for info on blw.

I thought that choking meant that the food was blocking the windpipe - i.e. not breathing. If your DC is breathing, it is called gagging and is totally normal. The gag reflex is something they need to work through, and non-BLWed babies also have to work through this too when they encounter lumps. One of the main things you can do to prevent choking is consider not the size of the piece of food you are giving, but the texture/consistency. Just make sure it's soft enough, or would dissolve in the mouth more easily. Hence whole cherry tomatoes and grapes are out as they could go down whole. I would definitely recommend at least reading up on what to do if your baby chokes.

Ah - in that case, we have had lots of gagging and one choking incident.

I will try more disolvable foods and have looked up St John's Ambo first aid course for babies. Thanks for advice ladies.

ask your hv to show you what to do if they are choking, (basically hold them forward with their head lower that their body and slap them between shoulders.)

my ds didn't do well on rice cakes til he was 8 months

I wondered about rice cakes. Plus they are nasty.

i did blw with my two and they never choked but did on rare occassions gag, i think that when you mix you may get more occurences as it is a mixture of skills (that isnt meant to be smarmy) whereas if you blw they eat it or dont

if they gagged i would smile (to stop the panic showing on my face, make them panic, make me panic mor into a smile)

say cough and cough at them repeatedly so they would copy (i would chew in front of them so they would copy me chewing so knew it worked)

i have never had to pat their backs but i remember my sil having to do that all the time

i did a baby first aid course so did feel confident that if they did choke i knew what to do which helped