Non-pureed food for baby?

[abigail_b]

My daughter is 6 months old. She sits well on her own and is expressing some interest in food. We have tried a little mashed avocado, and some Earth's best organic rice cereal with BM a couple of times (from the nanny when I wasn't home and she was refusing to take the BM from the bottle). She is mildly interested in these foods and will eat a little, but really isn't that into it. The other day, when I was eating an apple, she REALLY wanted it. I let her lick/suck on the parts that I had bitten, and she LOVED it! Was sucking away and smacking her lips and smiling at me.
With my son we just did spoon fed home-made purees during this stage, which seemed to work fine for us at the time and never impacted our nursing relationship (which went strong for almost 3 years), but I know that many on here don't go for the spoon fed route. So what kind of foods can you give at the baby stage (I am really paranoid about choking)? I can tell that she really wants to feed herself (which is totally in keeping with her personality, she is the exact opposite of my son, but that is a another story!)

Anyway, any advice is appreciated!

[tzs]

my babe sounds a little like yours. she wants to do herself. she'll eat purees but prefers "real" food. she's now 7 months and we started at 6 months when she was sitting, we had the chair, and she pulled the tray of meatloaf over to her spot. this is the week after she grabbed a handfull of my baba ganoush and shoved it in her mouth.

i don't do BLW but some spoon feeding, some self feeding.

the spoon stuff is all pretty much soft chunks or mashed stuff or age appropriate stuff we're eating but i keep some special stuff for her in case there's nothing good for her on my plate or i'm skipping meals (big steamed sweet potato pieces are easy b/c you can either give to her to gum up or just break off pieces with the spoon.)
let's see...
soft sweet potatoes, soft carrots, basically any soft veggies especially soup veggies, mashed potatoes, spinach, hummus, soft meats like hamburger, chopped liver, soft soup chicken, avocado, banana, melon, chunky pear or applesauce, matzo balls, noodles...i just started doing eggs since we have no history of allergies.

this weekend we had watermelon and it was the best self-feeding thing by far. first of all she loved it b/c it was cold and juicy and probably made her teething gums feel better but also b/c it was soft enough for her to really gum off some pieces but not so smooshy that it came apart in her hands.

cheerios is on my shopping list. not so much for nutrition but for something non-messy i can put on her tray and she can practice with.

they say broccoli is really good for self feeding b/c it has a natural "handle" so it's easy to hold. steam some up.

[Liss86]

Hi, That's like what we are doing. What my mom did with me was one day she went to take a bit of what she was eating and I followed her food with my mouth open, that's how she knew when to give me solids. So I decided to only give my LO breastmilk until she did that to. I didn't expect to do it until much later than we are. She had her first "food" one day before she turned six months. My LO is 6.5 months and she basically only eats solids if she grabs it herself or implies that she wants it. Usually she makes a sound of frustration when she can't reach something or does the eat sign(but with her hands clasped together while doing it). I basically just give her anything that is healthy if she wants it. She has eaten in order: Naked's Green Goodness/Superfood, Dinner rolls(not the best, nor what I would have planned to give her, but we were at someone else's house and she grabbed it off my plate and had already started chewing before I could even realize what she was doing), rice(again not something I hear people giving their babies as a first but she wanted it), black beans and rice, rice crackers, turkey lunch meat, ham lunch meat, lamb from a slow cooker. I,probably, would have followed an order if baby led weaning had rules but I'm glad they don't. Our family philosophy is if it's healthy and she picks it up and she can't choke on it...it's okay, but we aren't actively trying to give her solids.

TZS I'm excited for the first time she eats broccoli. I've heard and seen many great things and super adorable pictures on the facebook BLW page. I think it's so cute with those LOs eating their huge broccoli stalks all by themselves.

Good eating to you and all the best!

Liss

[abigail_b]

Thanks for the replies. I have been offline with a horrible stomach flu
I guess my question is really about the choking... Giving bananas, sweet potato, carrot etc in large pieces seems like a major choking hazard to me, am I missing something? I tried to do it with avocado the other day- basically just had a large piece that she and I held together and she gummed at...she did well- gummed off pieces and then gummed them up and swallowed. Just did a tiny gag once...but I still felt panicky and took it away because it seemed like it would be so easy for her to just chunk off a choking sized piece. Am I being overly paranoid? She is getting pretty good with the pincer grip. Can I give her little "cheerio-sized" pieces of the the above mentioned foods and have more peace of mind?
Thanks!

[sehbub]

Originally Posted by abigail_b

Thanks for the replies. I have been offline with a horrible stomach flu
I guess my question is really about the choking... Giving bananas, sweet potato, carrot etc in large pieces seems like a major choking hazard to me, am I missing something? I tried to do it with avocado the other day- basically just had a large piece that she and I held together and she gummed at...she did well- gummed off pieces and then gummed them up and swallowed. Just did a tiny gag once...but I still felt panicky and took it away because it seemed like it would be so easy for her to just chunk off a choking sized piece. Am I being overly paranoid? She is getting pretty good with the pincer grip. Can I give her little "cheerio-sized" pieces of the the above mentioned foods and have more peace of mind?
Thanks!

Honestly, I found with my kids that if I gave them little bites, THAT was when they had a hard time and gagged or choked.

The larger pieces worked really well because they were able to control the size of the bite. It looks scary, I know.

DS also LOVED baked chicken when he was a little bit older.

[tzs]

i guess the reason i'm ok with the chunks and doing it this way is that she IS so good at chewing and she took to it right away. i haven;t read the blw book but from what i've heard anecdotally, gagging is good, it's scary but they are learning to bring food forward. (correct me if i'm wrong!)

also, the pieces i give her are sometimes smooshed and pretty irregularly shaped by the time she even starts chewing. and with the stuff she bites off on her own, i'm assuming that her gums and the size of her mouth allow for the right sized bite. i mean, for those gums to get a piece off, the food is pretty mashed up by the time a chunk actually comes off, yk?

if you're freaked out try smooshing the bites up a little with the spoon before you give them to her and see how she does.

not an expert, first timer here too!

[hotharmony]

Even if you don't think your into baby lead weaning I would really suggest the book, as she explains that when a baby self feeds from a larger piece of food as in taking bites off of a chunk of banana or sweet potato they are controlling the size of food that goes in and working it with their tongues and learn quicker what works and what doesn't.

Their gag relux is much further out than an adult and they will spit anything that won't fit down out. So in fact larger pieces that they can handle themselves are much safer than smaller pieces that can slip into the back of their throats without being properly mashed.