how do you cope with a baby who shoves everything in his mouth and tries to suck it down (finger food / choking) ??

[Fairylea]

I have no idea what I'm doing :( and he's my second baby... I had bad pnd with my dd ten years ago and I can't remember any of what I did!

Ds is coming up to 9 months. He is on 3 small baby sized meals a day - basically half a pouch to a pouch of meaty type thing or some scrambled egg mashed up or small bits of eggy bread ... followed by a yoghurt or some fruit puree etc . He also has 4 8oz bottles of formula and sleeps through. He's a big lad - in size 12-18 month clothes.

The difficulty I'm having is with finger food. He has no concept of biting or gumming anything despite being offered it lots of times and now he will just grab the whole lot and use both hands to shove the whole lot in. He will then try to suck it and makes no attempt to chew and will just swallow.

It's very frightening and he has nearly choked (andI dont mean gag) on an organix carrot puff by attempting to swallow the whole thing sideways !

I am battling between knowing he needs to learn how to feed himself and yet he doesn't seem ready to safely ?

He will not eat anything remotely lumpy either just sucks the sauce off and spits it out. He will only eat Ellas 7 month pouches. He will eat bits of toast if I break off tiny tiny pieces and feed him.

What do I do? I feel like I'm doing it wrong :( or maybe I'm not.. ? I don't know.

[ceeveebee]

MT DD was like this before she got her teeth, whatever I gave her she would just put the enitre thing in her mough.. I jsut broke/cut everything up into lilttle pieces, so she would get 1/2 of a rice cake at a time! Once she worked out she could bite I give her bigger pieces (but even now at 15 mo I still cut toast into fingers as I think she would just fold it up and put the whole lot in!)

[Fairylea]

Thanks.. so I'm not alone then!

I'm doing the whole tiny pieces thing... when he has pieces of my toast I am tearing off tiddly size pieces and letting him have them. But it's literally a taster .. he would be there all day to eat even a quarter of a slice like that. If I gave him a finger of toast he would stick the whole lot in and try and swallow it.

Guess I will have to keep going as we are.

I think I will be packing him off to university with Ellas pouches at this rate.

[AnyaKnowIt]

DD was like this, even use to put one hand over her mouth with next bit of food next to her lips and head tilted back, anything to keep the food in her mouth. She would be gagging on it and still fight to keep it in her mouth

In the end I stopped cutting her food up so she had to bite and chew her food.

[AmandinePoulain]

Dd2 is younger than your DS (she's coming up to 7 months) but has only just stopped inhaling her food. She frightened me to death a few weeks ago when she sucked a piece of banana out of my hand and choked on it but in the last week or so something seems to have 'clicked' and she'll now happily munch on soft food like sandwiches and rice cakes. I still don't trust her with anything harder like cooked carrot sticks or cucumber, stuff her sister was wolfing down by now, because she still forgets to chew sometimes. There is no way I could have managed BLW with her! All you can do really is keep offering him lumpy food until he gets it I suppose. What about stuff with little lumps like couscous or those tiny baby pasta stars that Heinz make?

[fluffacloud]

I agree with the comment about it just clicking into place. That's what happened with DD1 at around 8m and DD2 very recently at 9.5m.

Before that I was scared to death of giving anything that was round or smaller that their fists.

9m is still early days, try not to worry - too much at least