baby led weaning is just a fancy name for finger food
March 7, 2016 9:51 AM   Subscribe

Want to start feeding my kid finger food and not mush. But I don't quite know how to do this - what foods, what size, can he really feed himself this young? Deets within

Hi parents & friends of children on metafilter: I'm tired of feeding my kid mush and want to graduate on to finger foods. But I'm terrified of my kid choking, and the BLW sites I've read don't really help me feel confident about it all. What foods do I give him? What size? I read once about a child choking to death on a piece of pop corn at the movie theatre and it scared me to bits. But all the foods BLW sites suggest seem about that size? He won't choke on a steamed, thick cut french fry size of zucchini? What about a cube of cheese? A blueberry?

My kid just turned 7mos. Sits up by himself, crawling and pulling himself up on to things. Has 2 bottom teeth, all 4 top teeth have pierced the gums and are now growing in. Pincer grasp - I think so? He can grasp objects but thumb/forefinger pinch isn't obvious. I gave him some of those gerber puffs and he wasn't too skillful, only about 1/8 actually made it into his mouth. At one point he was trying to use his index and middle finger to pick them up. I gave him a chunk of roasted butternut squash today and he didn't seem to know what to do with it (previously he ate it pureed off a spoon) and he started to cry. Not a promising start. He kind of chews those baby mum-mum crackers but I don't think he's entirely figured out chewing either.

So what do I feed him? Steam a sprig of broccoli until soft and let him go to town? Slice a strip of chicken breast? Cut up the chicken? Give him a small cube of cheese? How small is too small (or too big)? He's not gonna die from this? What foods are strictly Do Not Feed - Choking Hazard?

I am primarily BF'ing the little stinker and he does have a bit of sensitive stomach (gets gassy easily, gets constipated easily and so far I can't eat dairy bc it upsets his stomach, but I don't know if that means he can't eat dairy directly). TIA !
posted by St. Peepsburg to Food & Drink (38 answers total) 5 users marked this as a favorite
 
Start by getting some of these. You can put fresh food in there in the happy knowledge that they'll have to chew/gum it into mush before they can swallow it.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:54 AM on March 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


Oh, and for DO NOT FEED, chocking hazard, in addition to popcorn, which is really not a great choice, hot dogs, especially cut into little coins. If you want to feed hot dogs cut the little coins in half (so you get two semi-circles). The coins are just the right size and shape to get stuck in tiny throats.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:55 AM on March 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Avocado!
posted by woodvine at 9:57 AM on March 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Best answer: Ours is eight months and I came in to tell you about that mesh feeder thing too. Attach it to the highchair with links though because otherwise it's going on the floor with everything else.

I think you'll also appreciate what the OT at Cando Kiddo has to say about teaching babies to eat on their own. We've integrated a lot of her ideas and it's going great.
posted by teremala at 10:03 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: The #1 most popular finger food for early eaters is plain Cheerios. Safe shape, inexpensive, less messy than other options.

There's a school of thought that you should feed early-self-feeders larger pieces of firm foods rather than small ones, to reduce the odds that they can get too much into their mouth and choke. So a whole frozen bagel (also good for teething!) not one cut into pieces. Or a whole apple. If they only have a teensy number of teeth they won't be able to do much more than scraping some off. But softer foods prone to being crammable, like banana and avocado, should be cut up into tiny pieces.

Avoid grapes and berries for now along with the hot dogs, for the same reasons.

But honestly it sounds like your baby isn't actually ready for or interested in self-feeding yet. FWIW my older daughter wasn't interested in solids *at all* until she was 9 months old. This is not a race.
posted by Andrhia at 10:03 AM on March 7, 2016 [7 favorites]


My 8 mth old grandson is visiting. He loves avocado. Bananas. Some kind of baby rice cracker from the health food store that pretty dissolves in his mouth. Hummus! Mom is vegetarian so no meat. Cheerios- the organic kind. Sweet potato.

Mom and dad make all finger food about the size of cheerios except for the crackers which he gums on. He can sort of get little bits of food to his mouth, but some goes on the floor. They give him little bits of whatever they're eating that seems ok. Yesterday mom was eating eggplant parm and she gave him a few little tastes of just eggplant, he liked it.
posted by mareli at 10:06 AM on March 7, 2016


A friend of mine used to food mill everything they were having for dinner and give that to the baby. So, still mush, but the same food. Lasagna? Into the food mill. Burritos? Into the food mill.

For cheese, instead of a cube, how about sticks? Black beans are good for pincer grasp, but you could also mash them just a bit and very easily. Avocado, yes. I've also seen some moms do a tiny bit of pre-chew on, say, a small bit of broccoli to just break it down a bit and give that to their kid. This really depends on your level of comfort, obviously, but kids are all up in your business so there's probably not a real reason to not do this.

You can try out foods that you are eating and just smash them a little bit. Babies are also really frequent gaggers on just about anything so try not to freak out too hard. Keep a close eye, obviously, but my kid would sometimes gag on something then try again and do fine.
posted by amanda at 10:08 AM on March 7, 2016


Banana, avocado, small cubes of cheese, small squares of buttered toast (or with a dab of peanut butter), any vegetable steamed until very soft. We would put some on our son's tray for him to try to pick up, but also would put pieces up to his mouth so he could take it in his mouth with a bit of help.
posted by JenMarie at 10:18 AM on March 7, 2016


It really depends on the kid. Our older kid we were more careful with. Our younger insisted on eating anything we did. We gave him everything that wasn't really hard - e.g. no chips or whole nuts. He happily gnawed on basically everything. After him, we decided the mesh strainers, only soft food, etc. etc. rules were unnecessary. However, I really don't think this would have worked well for our older son, so figuring out what your kid is comfortable eating is important.

(However, we stayed away from real choking hazards, whole grapes, hot dogs, whole nuts, etc.)

Note that their gag reflex is way further forward in their mouth at that age, so gagging isn't necessarily a sign of choking (as pointed out above).
posted by lab.beetle at 10:27 AM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Cheerios and shredded cheese are good places to start. As are well-cooked peas and soft chunks of vegetable. I prefer elongated narrower shapes to cubes because they're less likely to be choked on. Later, elbow noodles and cut up pieces of toast with things spread on it. Also don't forget to increase texture and flavor in the mashed foods - thin purees turn into thick purees which turn into things mashed with a fork. You can mix almost anything into plain Greek yogurt.

Popcorn, whole grapes, whole cherry tomatoes, nuts, sliced hot dogs are absolute no-gos.

I have found that my kids' ability to get solid foods into their mouths corresponded well with their ability to actually eat it. If your kid is getting one cheerio per minute into his mouth, that may be what he's ready for at this point. And you're early for finger foods - he's got lots of time. If you're bored with mashes, mash him some table food. Add cinnamon and nutmeg to some of the fruits. Have fun with random flavors.
posted by telepanda at 10:30 AM on March 7, 2016


Response by poster: But softer foods prone to being crammable, like banana and avocado, should be cut up into tiny pieces.

How small? Pretend I know nothing. The size of a pea? He won't choke? 1cm sizes? How come they will choke on a hot dog piece but not a banana piece? I feel like such an idiot about this but I really haven't developed a judgment around "probably ok" vs "your child will die."

He does gag/sputter on things like the first time he tried baby mum mums which makes me extra nervous.

But honestly it sounds like your baby isn't actually ready for or interested in self-feeding yet.

Thanks for this. I think you might be right. He is VERY interested in whatever I am eating, he stares at it, reaches for it and cries when I don't give it (he's done this since 4 months old - I think he knows adult food is tastier than the bland baby stuff), but when I give him pieces of food to feed himself he doesn't seem happy. He liked pureed on a spoon and ate anything until last week when he suddenly hated everything but baby cereal (which constipates him terribly) and avocado. But he doesn't really chew - today I showed him exaggerated biting and chewing motions and he finally started sucking the mush off his fingers whereas before it just accumulated on his hands.

So how do I tell if he's ready? I've not read helpful info on the web - just whether he's 6mos, sitting up and has pincer grasp. What other signs do I look for? I don't mean to rush him, but I am tired of the time/space restriction of BFing.

ok that's the end of my commentary.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 10:35 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: Have you read actual information on the concept called baby-led weaning? I can't tell if you've read how it works and want other ideas, or have assumed the concept called "baby-led weaning" really is just about feeding the kid finger foods.

In general it is about the kid feeding himself food, but there is a theory and a progression for parents to ease their minds and give guidance on how to do it. If you haven't read anything specific on that, please let us know, because it's not just about cutting things into tiny pieces.

Food before 1 is typically just for fun -- it's for texture, experience, interaction, exposure to flavors, hand-eye coordination, how one acts at a table, sensory exposure, gag reflex and esophagus training -- but the *primary* nutrition will still be through other means.
posted by barnone at 10:46 AM on March 7, 2016 [6 favorites]


Best answer: Just keep offering food. Eventually he'll figure it out.

Our first foods for our little one included things like rice and black beans, large-curd cottage cheese, Cheerios, peas, diced steamed carrots/squash/zucchini/etc, avocado, diced apples/bananas/pears/peaches, tiny cheese cubes, tiny turkey cubes, basically everything cut small. We just kept offering it and eventually he started chowing down.

Our kid did a lot of investigation and experimentation with the food -- including smashing, squishing, throwing, poking, pushing it around his high chair tray, putting it in his mouth and taking it back out, gumming it, trying to feed it to us (and of course we ate it in an exaggerated way to show him it was food). Eventually he got the idea that he should eat it.

We put frozen fruit in the mesh feeder things when he was teething. That was a hit. A sometimes very messy hit, but a hit nonetheless.
posted by erst at 10:47 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: The major choking hazards are all relatively hard, a bit slippery, and don't mash/disintegrate easily in the mouth. They are also round and a good size to lodge in a child's trachea.

The reason babies have such sensitive gag reflexes is it makes them less likely to choke on stuff.

For cube sizes, you know those bags of frozen peas and carrots? The carrot cubes are a good size. For the elongated shapes people are referencing, imagine lining up 4-5 of those carrot cubes. That's a good size.

For readiness, you watch him closely when you give him things. If he's successful you give him something a little more challenging. If he gags a couple times, pull back a little. Practice practice practice.

This is nerve wracking but that's ok because it makes you tune in to how your kid is doing instead of walking off and ignoring him. You build confidence by proceeding slowly and watching him succeed. Babies are surprisingly good at learning to eat. It scares every parent at first, but they can totally do it.

He will figure things out at his own pace over the next few months - learning to suck mush off his fingers is a great example. If you find yourself pushing solids so you can back off the breastfeeding, though, you may want to consider supplementing with formula, as most of his actual nutrition will continue to come from liquid til close to a year. For the next few months, eating solids is more about learning how to eat.
posted by telepanda at 10:48 AM on March 7, 2016


Popcorn is a big choking hazard for kids and even adults, so I'm not terribly surprised by that story you heard. Although of course it is terribly sad! Hot dogs are also a big choking hazard, as mentioned above. We actually cut them into very small strips when giving them to kids, although of course there's no reason to give hot dogs to babies. I actually quartered blueberries for my oldest child's first foods but jeez how did I have the time? For starter foods we love avocado, banana and small chunks of roasted sweet potato or butternut squash. My kids both loved carbs so we did a fair amount of Cheerios and small pieces of soft bread (no crusts at first). Proteins: hard boiled egg yokes - we pop the yellow yoke out, crumble it a bit and baby goes to town. Small bits of shredded salmon or cheese. I think "tiny shreds" works better for me as a mental image of portion size than "cube." Cubes sounds like a choking hazard to me, although I know the parents suggesting that are being perfectly safe. I wouldn't worry that your little one didn't seem interested at first. It's harder and slower to self feed. Why bother when he can eat from the tap? :) Just keep trying and add snack times when baby is happy and not yet too hungry. Maybe he'll like it if he sees you take a bite of something, then you hand a small bite to him. I share bananas with my baby like this most mornings. Or give him a spoonful of something on his tray and let him have fun smearing it around. Some yogurt, mashed avo or a purée. Maybe this will encourage him to have a taste and he'll find it's delicious and fun! Get your camera ready before you do this one!
posted by areaperson at 10:50 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: Just saw your update. How small? Try half the size of a pea, to be extra cautious. Tiny, half-pea sizes of soft banana or avocado.
posted by areaperson at 10:57 AM on March 7, 2016


Have you read this book? It's a little repetitive, but I think it does a pretty good job of describing the BLW process, along with dos and don'ts. Basically the gist is that you put the kid at the table and allow their natural interest in food and eating develop into food "playtime," in which they're allowed to figure out all of the mechanics required to get something from their plate into their belly. Eating under this approach has nothing to do with nutrition and lots to do with learning for quite a while.

Caveat: this is all just academic to me so far -- I have a four-month-old, and we plan to go the BLW route, but haven't tried it yet.
posted by craven_morhead at 11:01 AM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


We did BLW and I loved it. I did get the book because, as mentioned above, there are actually some guidelines and a progression as opposed to just "toss the kid a steak." We started with spears of soft peeled sweet potatoes, also did a lot of avocados and bananas and mango spears. I mostly did thicker matchsticks as opposed to small cubes, and I did get a criss-cross blade for making cross-cut veggies (easier for little fingers to grip.) I also did a lot of zucchini or broccoli fritters (patties with veggies + egg, basically) and oatmeal "pancakes" that were oats, egg, and mashed banana. I found BLW very fun, very easy, very messy, and a great fit for our family.
posted by Bella Sebastian at 11:01 AM on March 7, 2016 [4 favorites]


I gave mine cucumber sticks and carrot sticks to chew on - but I let them wilt for a few hours (you know until they no longer snap when you bend them). Cut them the size of an adult middle finger (like cut in half and then quarter, peel cucumbers, and if cucumber has seeds cut off seeds).
His first food was banana he suckled on it (i gave him half a banana which he firmly gripped, sometimes with both hands. Personally I was always leary of apples, break off to easily.

But this finger food at 6 or 7 months wasn't yet about eating or replacing a feeding you know? The food intake during the first six months (until he was about 1 yr) through finger food would not have been sufficient, he still nursed for nutrition and I also fed him mushed /pureed potaoes, steamed carots, steamed apples etc along with the self feeding with his fingers. He loved eeaating purees with his fingers. (Very messy but I did not mind)What he absolutely loved was also melons of any kind, but I think he was 8 or 9 months when I started him on those and be sure to get rid of all pips.
posted by 15L06 at 11:05 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: We did baby-led weaning. My first piece of advice would be to take an infant CPR class if you haven't already. My daughter had three choking incidents that were quickly resolved with the information we learned in infant CPR. This will also help you learn to distinguish between genuine choking incidents and normal stuff, like gagging, which happens a lot with kids of this age.

My daughter choked on: 1. A small gristly piece of meat, 2. A big chunk of apple, 3. A halved cherry. I should have been cutting the cherries into quarters, so that one was really my bad. After the apple incident, I started steaming my apples instead.

Generally, with soft foods (avocado, banana), cutting them into fry-like shapes is sufficient. Harder foods that don't mush up and can block a windpipe should be cut smaller, think the size of your pinky nail or so. Hot dogs and sausages should be cut into long strips.

I never did find advice for cuts of meat like steak or porkchops that felt really right--it's such a hazard generally, even for grown-ups, seems like. Ground beef crumbles always felt pretty safe, though.

Don't worry if your kid doesn't get much into their mouth. That's typical for BLW and will improve pretty rapidly as you move into your kiddo's first year. It's actually one of the benefits to BLW, which is supposed to be a big compliment to exclusive breastfeeding. Remember that primary nutrition should come from breastmilk or formula up until a year.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:05 AM on March 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


I found a lot of the baby-led weaning stuff too frightening and stuck with small, easily-dissolved things (Cheerios and a bunch of these, which are tasty enough to steal for yourself), purees and yogurt, and mashed up stuff that was soft enough for the kid to smush with his tongue/gums (banana, avocado, sweet potato, well-cooked black beans). As the kid got older, I made the mashed stuff lumpier, and then kept it in small, manageable chunks. If you eat a lot of chicken or fish, those are easy to separate into manageable stringy/flaky pieces, but that's once he's confidently managing mushy chunks. Deli-style sliced cheese is great because you can just break it into a lot of little stick shapes. (Shredded is also good, but messy.)

No hard stuff, obviously, but also nothing that can be wadded down into a sticky mass (e.g. soft squishy bread). I aimed for matchstick-like pieces: an inch or two long, and about the width of a McDonald's french fry. Gagging may be natural, but it's hard to distinguish from choking, and it's scary; I viewed gagging as a sign that my baby wasn't ready for that particular food/size/texture and dialed it back a little, and that seemed to work.

The first few months of solids are annoying: they're messy, you have to do a whole lot of extra prep, your baby will devour something one day and refuse it the next, and on top of that you still have to freaking breastfeed. It doesn't last forever, and feeding gets way easier with time and practice and additional teeth.
posted by Metroid Baby at 11:06 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: Gagging may be natural, but it's hard to distinguish from choking, and it's scary; I viewed gagging as a sign that my baby wasn't ready for that particular food/size/texture and dialed it back a little, and that seemed to work.

The gag reflex actually moves further back into the mouth throughout the first year, as the baby loses the tongue-thrust reflex, so you're likely to see a lot of it as babies begin to manipulate food in their mouths. Choking looks REALLY different from gagging as per my infant CPR class--though there might be some gagging with choking, the silent wide-eyed genuine choking THING is really clear once you know what to look for. This video gives a good run-down of what you might see, but the advice for resolving it is for an older child. Really really really recommend an infant CPR class.

Learning to recognize choking is so important generally as kids learn to eat.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:21 AM on March 7, 2016 [5 favorites]


Best answer: How come they will choke on a hot dog piece but not a banana piece? I feel like such an idiot about this but I really haven't developed a judgment around "probably ok" vs "your child will die."

Sorry to triple post, but what you have to worry about is foods which will block the windpipe and form a seal. Hot dogs. Hard candies. Grapes. Nuts. Apple chunks with peel on it. Big chunks of air impermeable foods. Banana and avocado are primarily dangers if the kid shoves a lot of food into their mouth at once. I often found it easiest to give small pieces to that I could monitor how much my kid was eating at once When in doubt, with things like blueberries, I'd smush them between my fingers or cut them smaller. My daughter is two and it's only within the last few weeks that I let her eat whole grapes (and only then while monitored closely). One thing that I really like from BLW is the advice that "if in doubt, cut it up."
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 11:28 AM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Some things that worked well with my kids:

oriental fried rice -- everything is little and there is a variety of foods (rice, eggs, veggies)
Peanut butter chips -- the peanut version of chocolate chips.
Complementary Pie -- from either Diet for a Small Planet or Recipes for a Small Planet. I skipped the spicy ingredients like onions. So it is basically bean and rice quiche.
Bananas

Another thing that went over well with one of my sons was making mashed potatoes and mixing in mushy baby veggies, like carrots, peas etc. Mashed potatoes aren't as mushy as baby food, so they are more "chewable" and are a normal adult food without being a choking hazard.

At five months or so of age, my oldest son taught his infant cousin to tip her bowl up to her mouth rather than rely on a spoon for eating things like cold cereal in milk. It helped her eat more at one time in spite of poor coordination. But do make sure that what you put in the bowl is absolutely not a choking hazard and not hot.
posted by Michele in California at 11:33 AM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: I was terrified to give my kiddo food, and she choked a few times, which did not help, so I get where you are coming from. A pediatrician friend of ours told me most kids choke when learning to eat. Yes, nthing the recommendation to take CPR. You do have to teach them how to chew - put something in your mouth, when she's watching, and actually show him how to mash it up with his teeth! (Our ped had to tell us this. We both felt kinda dumb for not realizing it.) I would cut things really small at first - better too small than too big. We would just cut up tiny bits of whatever was on our plates. They prefer to eat what you're eating (poison tester, we call it). We also just did a lot of soft food - yogurt, applesauce, rice, scrambled egg, etc. It's okay to take it really, really slow. We did and it worked fine for us. Kiddo is 21 months now and eats great.
posted by john_snow at 11:39 AM on March 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Best answer: If you want to get academic about it, here's the AAP's policy on choking. The section on "high risk foods for choking" says:

Hot dogs are the food most commonly associated with fatal choking among children. A hot dog shares the physical characteristics... of high risk toys. It is cylindrical, airway sized, and compressible, which allows it to wedge tightly into a child's hypo pharynx and completely occlude the airway... other high risk foods include hard candy, peanuts/nuts, seeds, whole grapes, raw carrots, apples, popcorn, chunks of peanut butter, marshmallows, chewing gum, and sausages.

They recommend cutting into pieces no larger than 1/2 inch.

Sorry to say, the AAP recommends all of the above foods be kept away completely from children under the age of 4 years old, so technically it's not OK to give whole grapes even to a toddler. I have to admit that we do not have 100% compliance (or even close!) on this rule with my own 3 year old, but that's the science.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 11:58 AM on March 7, 2016 [3 favorites]


Best answer: Cheerios with a bit of milk (or breastmilk or OJ or...). My kid loves them a bit soggy so they are easier to gum up.

Yeah, we had a long phase of "I want that!" followed by a weird look on his face like... What is this? It's like....things. In my mouth.???
posted by jrobin276 at 12:06 PM on March 7, 2016


Best answer: We did "toast fingers" (I suppose they're more properly toast soldiers) ... a piece of toast cut into long thin strips which were easy for baby to grab, hold, and gum. We spread them with various fruit and veggie purees (as if they were jam) or with hummus.

Cheerios, shredded cheese, puffs, all good practice for picking up small bits and gumming them into submission.

We also basically gave them a little of whatever we were eating, cut up into cheerio-size bits or smaller. So two or three pieces of pasta, cut into ultra-tiny bits (spirals are the easiest to cut); shreds or bits of the meat, in baby-fingernail size pieces; etc. Even little bits of raw lettuce from our salads with a bit of dressing ... that was more for the interest/experience/participating with adults.

So a "meal" might have been half a piece of toast cut into fingers and smeared with a veggie puree (the rest of which we'd try to spoon-feed him), and a couple of tablespoons of whatever the adults were having, cut into obnoxiously tiny bits. Ours would pretty reliably eat all the toast and puree, and experiment with the adult foods to try taste and texture. Some things they loved (I had a 9-month-old crazy for curry), other things they just mashed around on the tray after one tongue-touch. It helps to be pretty relaxed about mess level, and to count the adult food as "extra" rather than as part of the core nutrition.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:10 PM on March 7, 2016


I had a kid who staunchly refused purees pretty early on, so we sort of fell into BLW by the side door. As a result I don't have much experience with the whole "convince them it's food" part, though you might want to try either explicitly giving it to him from your plate (even if you mean it to be his serving), or feeding him puree until he is mostly satisfied and then some food to experiment with. We mostly did stuff at about the size scale of Cheerios. Whether that was actual Cheerios or a sweet potato or chickpeas that had been half-smashed with a fork, or rice and avocado mashed together. (You can see from the Cheerio video that a sticky hand will work about as well as a proper pincer grip.) Whatever food we were eating, we would mash it with the flat part of a fork, and if it wasn't a food that could be done with, we didn't give it to him. Pasta, eggs, rice, tofu, beans, cooked veggies, and soft fruit all worked well.

The mesh feeder linked upthread is the grossest thing, but really effective.

We sometimes went in the opposite direction (the frozen bagel trick mentioned upthread, a pizza crust, stamp-sized bits of pancake. A few times I'd tear a little bit of skin off an apple with my teeth and he'd suck on that little flat juicy bit. I think the keys for larger pieces is making sure it's something that isn't slippery and gets softer in their mouths, or that it's something that takes so much jaw work that they are unlikely to get much at a time, and that you're watching them closely.
posted by tchemgrrl at 1:19 PM on March 7, 2016


Here is a list of things my friend's baby has been eating since she had a tooth.

Avocado
Guacamole
Hummus (Garlic breath baby!)
Olives, cut in half
Cantaloupe cut into small cubes
Bananas
Chicken
Ground meat
Sweet potato
Regular potato
Cheerios
all the berries
Apple (baked)
Big noodles with tomato sauce (rigatoni, elbows, ziti)
shrimp
Chorizo (I was shocked too, she coughed, stuck her tongue out, drank some water and reached for more.)
Rice
Black Beans
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Spinach
Eggs

She's allergic to milk, so no yogurt or cheese or cottage cheese.

You get the idea. She's an omnivore and it's pretty funny to see this angelic, towheaded little girl, Hoover up all the noms.
posted by Ruthless Bunny at 1:59 PM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Response by poster: If you haven't read anything specific on that, please let us know, because it's not just about cutting things into tiny pieces.

I thought I had but I guess not - if you have any links to a summary of the progression and signs to look for please do post them.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 3:22 PM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


One piece of advice is not to do this when the baby is actually hungry. This way he won't get frustrated and will treat is as playing, thereby developing coordination. After ~1 month, there will be enough coordination to actually get food in there.

As for foods, go for soft things: bananas, baked potato (make sure it's actually cool inside), steamed broccoli, etc. Size it so his little hands can grip it.

Make sure the chair doesn't make him lean back.
posted by geekBird at 4:47 PM on March 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


I posit that you are overthinking this.

My daughter never really had straight up purees. I made all her food, by which I mean I fed her what we were eating and sometimes made extra of something to freeze for her for future meals. I never considered myself a person who would make home made baby food but it turned out to be 100% easier and cheaper than the alternative. (We only did the packaged purees occasionally when we were traveling and wanted a backup)

I also didn't panic that much about choking - I just kept a really close eye on her, especially if she was trying something new. I think only once did we ever have to step in and help her when she was genuinely choking and pull something out of her mouth, and I don't even remember what it was - it wasn't one of the common choking hazards. My nephew's first choke was on a piece of spaghetti, of all things. It's terrifying, but when it happens you deal with it because adrenaline and you only start freaking out a bit afterward. It's going to happen at some point, more likely than not, so take an infant CPR class if that makes you feel more confident about it and accept that it PROBABLY will happen, he will PROBABLY be okay, and move on. Otherwise your anxiety may make him feel anxious and make him more likely to gag or choke.

So let me clarify - are you trying to stop spoon-feeding your kid, or just stop with the purees? Because that's two different things. You can start feeding her non-pureed things by spoon to get her used to chunks and chewing and get here really interested in new textures. Assuming that's in play:

The earliest foods I gave my daughter were plain Greek yogurt mixed with stuff - like blueberries and banana I'd boiled down with some water on the stove. The yogurt is a really good thickener, as is banana, and by not pureeing the fruit it meant there were little chunks mixed up in there that she could get used to tongueing around and gumming/chewing. Making your own applesauce also means you can leave it a little bit chunky but soft, and it can be mixed with yogurt or given on its own.

We still use yogurt to mix with the left over bits at the bottom of a box of cereal (we use Weet-Bix but something like shredded wheat is good for this too). She's 16 months now and still only occasionally appears interested in using a spoon herself, but this can be mixed thick enough that she can just scoop it into her mouth. Like the yogurt and fruit, it means there are bits in there an early solids eater can learn to get used to.

We also as a family ate a lot of roasted veggies around this time so I could just mash up the nice soft carrots, or sweet potato, or regular potato, or cauliflower, or whatever, with my fork and feed those to her. Mashing with a fork rather than something electric again means there are "bits" to learn to chew. Mashed potatos (mashed so they're still a little bit lumpy) are also great to mix with, like, chicken broth, or the juices from some one-pot meal, to again be lumpy and thick and texture-y and even scoopable with hands if you he's into that and you don't feel like spoon feeding.

There was a sudden transition one day where she refused to let us spoon or hand feed anything directly into her mouth, and that was the "time to transition to finger foods!" signal for us. We'd always put little bits of meat we'd shred up from our own plates or fork-mashed bits of something onto her tray to see if she wanted them, but we didn't explicitly Make Finger Foods Happen until she refused to be fed by us. I honestly can't remember what age it was that this happened. At that point, we just started giving her bigger chunks of things on our plates.

Once she moved to finger foods, favorites included:
- Bits of meat (canned tuna and salmon are also really good for this, since they can be broken down with a fork)
- Peas! We actually give them to her straight from the freezer. They thaw quickly anyway, but when frozen feel pretty good on teething gums, I think.
- Pears; ripe pairs are soft but not banana-soft, and slicing off small pieces or one of us taking a small bite and passing that bite to her worked well. As a bonus, when you get to the point that you want to just hand her a whole piece of fruit to go at, pears are soft and easy for this whereas stuff like apples aren't.
- Yeah, mashed potatoes in all their combinations
- Blueberries. I know these are one of the choking hazards but the ones we get here are relatively small and soft (they get even softer if you freeze and then thaw them) and she's had 0 issues with them since she started them at about six months old
- Shrimp chips/prawn crackers. They have no nutritional value whatsoever but they were the first crunchy food she ever devoured with glee, and they're a good way to keep her entertained when we go out to eat.
- Scrambled eggs

And YMMV - my daughter didn't like plain bananas till about a month ago, at which point she demanded an entire one as a morning snack on a daily basis. She's never liked avocado unless I mash it up with some lime as baby-guacamole. Not all guaranteed-baby-will-love-them foods are actually guaranteed.

But honestly if you're going from "completely smooth purees" to "finger foods" that might be a liiiiittle bit too much of a stretch right now. I'd advise trying the fork-mashing of your own foods first, still spoon or hand-feeding, and let him get used to that. Once he figures out that's food, he's more likely to just pick up that piece of broccoli or that half a sandwich and go to town on it.
posted by olinerd at 5:40 PM on March 7, 2016


Oh, one more. Watermelon. Even at five months I just handed her a triangle-cut slice to hold, directed the yummy end toward her mouth, and she eventually managed to consume some amount of it. Nice and hydrating, delicious, and it gets gummed down to small manageable bits to swallow really easily. You might try that.
posted by olinerd at 5:44 PM on March 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Best answer: I agree that it sounds like your baby may just not be interested in eating solids much yet. Mine was chomping at the bit (pretty much literally) to get started and he never took "persuasion." So, yes, it's not a race, and if yours isn't ready now he'll be ready at some point. But when he IS ready...

My baby is exactly one month older than yours. I'm really quite surprised by all of the people who cut things up. We never did that. The following general principles have served us well:

1) Give the baby very big or very small things, but nothing in between. "Very big" means things like entire pork chops, asparagus, hunks of broccoli, slices of pear - basically if it's longer than one of your thumbs and at least an inch thick, it's large enough. "Very small" means things like corn (if your baby has the patience to try to pick it up). If it's very large, the baby can't lose their grip on it and accidentally swallow something larger than they are ready for. If it's very small, they physically can't choke. It's true that with large things the baby can bite off smaller chunks, but we've found that since they are in control of the whole process they don't choke. At least, my son has never had any difficulty, and he's been eating solids like this since he was about four months old.

2) I agree with PhoBWankenobi's point about gagging vs choking. The baby will gag, especially at first as they learn about where in the mouth they can put things. But that is not choking. Try not to stress too much about that. (Hard, I know!) We found our son learned pretty rapidly how to avoid gagging so now he only does if he is startled or he has a new food with a weird texture. So it passes quickly, but that part is legitimately a bit nerve-wracking.

3) You can totally combine BLW with purees. Our kid was never much interested in milk and loves food, so in an effort to make sure he had enough calories (he was always underweight) we would feed him purees as well as the solid foods. Especially back when he had trouble actually swallowing much food, that was super helpful and it didn't cause any problem. Now I'd guess he gets about 35% of his calories from puree, 35% from finger foods, and 30% from milk.
posted by forza at 7:30 PM on March 7, 2016 [2 favorites]


Best answer: So, yeah, in terms of actual foods, we give him pretty much anything we eat. Some specific foods that he likes a lot:

- plain bananas but do NOT cut them up. Just peel it and maybe halve it and that's it.
- pears cut into long thin slices. or apples but those are pretty hard without teeth.
- broccoli chunks
- asparagus spears, whole
- green beans, whole
- pasta just as long noodles (hiLARious)
- large chunks of steamed sweet potato
- pork chop (either on the bone, or more often a large chunk, the size of a couple of adult fingers)
- chicken (same size as pork chop)
- bread (same size as other stuff)

He does amazingly well with all of these things especially given that until recently he didn't have any teeth. I have also heard that early food experience with a variety of textures can help avoid some of the pickiness later in life, because they have that early learning. YMMV and I'm aware that there's a lot of variation around this but we did the same thing with my older kid and he is a very non-picky eater now at age 3.
posted by forza at 7:35 PM on March 7, 2016 [1 favorite]


Oh one other thing I wanted to mention - there is this product called the Dechoker I've recently learned about, it's FDA approved and if you worry a lot about choking you might feel better having one around the house.
posted by treehorn+bunny at 12:24 AM on March 8, 2016 [1 favorite]


I had two more thoughts:

Graham crackers dipped in milk were a huge hit last night (he's older, but teething horribly with molars).

He has spent a lot of time looking at our mouths, running his fingers along our teeth, poking fingers in my mouth and squiggling around, we pretend to munch his fingers, fascinated by my bite guard, etc. I didn't quite realise what was going on until I read John Snows comment! Its gross, but worked I guess.
posted by jrobin276 at 2:39 PM on March 8, 2016


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