When, What, and How to Give My Little One More Solid Food

I never used stage 3 foods, they always made my sons gag! Just start out with soft fruits like banana, and with things that will get soft like cracker (I like whole wheat ritz). You can also find some soft cheeses (cheesehead sticks are nice and soft). My boys also loved those little baby hotdogs(the soft ones by gerber), and soft cooked pastas and vegis like peas and soft cooked carrots.

Best of luck!

I suggest that first of all you use dry solids to start with that he can control the size of pretty much (like cheerios). Show him "chewing" (Some kids need to be shown..he just doesn't know how yet!) And cut up strips of food for him to work on..french fries, pancake strips etc..stuff that mushes on its own when he plays with it.

Not sure if you have tried, but my daughter loved the following foods and they dissolve easily in the mouth:

*small chunks of avocado
*grated cheese

Cheerios are more than fine...my son has been eating them with no issue since he was about 8mos old. Neither of my kids liked the puffs. you can also try the baby goldfish, they are smaller than the original.

I would cut bananas up into 4's until he gets used to the texture - chix in little bits are also good.

My son just turned a year and as about 4 teeth and is almost totally off baby food. I think a lot of it is them getting used to the texture.

Good Luck

I have a 9-month-old with the same problem. Except, when he gets the food stuck in his mouth, he vomits everything that we just put in his stomach, so so have to feed him twice. Who can afford that? So- I stopped doing solids. At his recent 9-month well-child appointment, his doctor told me that we really should challenge him towards being able to swallow solids. For him, the issue is the gag reflex. There is nothing else going on except that. So, she suggests before meals (so if he vomits, he doesn't lose all his food) to try with easily dissolved foods. He really likes the "puffy things" from Gerber (those little puffed snacks). They dissolve almost instantly. He does okay with Graham crackers (break corners off first so he can't get really huge chunks). Cheerios are good. But honestly- the most priceless thing for us has been to have water handy- so that if he starts to gag, we get some water in his mouth immediately. it has never failed to force him to swallow. After about 2 or 3 days of this, he has yet to vomit up food again. The doctor said the main thing is to calm the gag reflex- and the only way that will happen is to challenge it. It really does work.

However, she did say that it is important to make sure it is the gag reflex, and not a more serious issue that he can't get the food down his throat or esophagus. The thing that told her it was the gag reflex was that it stayed down when we provided water with it. (You don't need to use water, just some liquid... my boy just LOVES water.)

Hope this helps and good luck.

This is a great resource website.

http://wholesomebabyfood.com/s

Try small pieces of ripe banana that will mush in his mouth between his tongue and palate. Same with vegetables, steam them to a very soft consistency and put the pieces in a bowl. Again, they'll mush in his fingers and between his tongue and palate. Going from pureed to texture is a trick. My middle child would suck the sauce off of toddler foods and spit the pieces out or store them in his cheeks like a chipmunk. It takes time. It feels different. And the food tastes different as well. Cheerios are a good finger food for his age. They'll dissolve easily in his mouth. Give him a mini bagel to chew on or a teething cookie/cracker. Steam ripe apple pieces so they're really soft and let him chew on those. He'll get the knack of it and will be gnawing on everything soon enough. Happy chewing!!!

CW,

You might want to try the Gerber stars. They come in flavors like sweet corn and peach. There are more, but I can't remember them. They are similar to Cheerios, but dissolve in mouth faster and are a lower choking hazard. My daughter will be two in 10 days and has 12 teeth. She hasn't had the choking problem, but finding food that she can eat was also a challenge.

If you have the time, patience and inclination you might want to think of doing homemade applesauce. That way you can cook it down as much as you'd like, and don't have to deal with the salt content of store bought.

Hope this helps,
Melissa

I see you have a lot of responses, so I will just pass on what I have learned. My husband works in the canning industry, and he told me that baby food has the highest incidents of food contamination of any other canned food. So I stayed away from commercially prepared foods. I got a baby food grinder at Target and just ground up whatever we were eating. When your baby is ready he will take on chunkier foods. I would follow his lead if it were me. The grinder assures he gets all the great nutrition you are eating and even cheerieos are known to be a carrier of certain molds from the grain storage methods. I did feed my children cheerios with no incident from time to time, the hole in the middle also prevents choking, but I limited it because of what I had read about the mold. I mashed up bananas for my kids and put everything through that grinder, it was great. Good luck and good health to you both.

T.

we used a little mesh container for our son. I got it at Target and you put food into the mesh and they chew the food through the mesh so the food comes through but never in big chunks so they can't choke. My son loved it.

I recommend the Baby MumMums. They are rice crackers that will help your little one learn to bite into them and they dissolve almost instantly, so, very little chance of gagging. Veggie puffs also dissolve almost instantly and the kids tend to like them. There are Yogurt Melts and freeze dried fruits (big boxes at Costco) that all dissolve quickly, but promote the chewing/biting action. The fruits at Costco are pur fruit slices with nothing added. They are sweeter than original due to the drying process. Delicious.

Good luck and just keep offering. The more often you offer a food and keep trying the more likely he will be able to rise to the challenge without a problem. If he gags one day, wait a couple of days, then try again.

D.

I started giving my little one cheerios and stuff at about 5mo... when she started putting stuff in her own mouth. She is almost 9 mo now and eats everything. She loves solid foods, and can eat just about everthing I give her. She still gets baby foods, but just about always the stage 3 foods.
If you are only giving him the stage 2 baby food, try to start thickening it with some rice cereal, so it's not liquid anymore and he has to work it to get it down....
I have always used rice cereal in my kids' food just because I hate the liquid, and have 4 super healthy, kids that were GREAT eaters when they were that age...
Good luck

I started feeding all three of my kids Cheerios around 6 months. I always started with half cheerios until they got the hang of gumming them until they could swallow them. My youngest child refused to eat baby food, so from the time she was 6 months old she has been eating soft/bite sized food herself (she also won't let anyone feed her). I started with cooked carrots, cut up really small, bananas, avocado, applesauce mixed with baby oatmeal, yogurt - eventually yogurt w/Cheerios so that she could feed herself. She also only had 4 teeth until she was a year. Good luck - you may want to talk with your pediatrician if the choking doesn't stop. That sounds awfully frightening.

Hi CW,

My daughter is also a little slow on the teething front, so that has slowed us down a little on her eating "chunks" as well. With her, we discovered something interesting about the 3rd stage jarred foods. When I gave her the baby food with chunks, she'd spit out the chunks. If I gave her little chunks of table food without the surrounding puree, she'd mush them with her tongue and eat them. It seems like she wanted everything going into her mouth to be the same texture. Go figure.

Her gag reflex isn't too sensitive, so we've been able to transition her to lots of table food by now. Let your little guy try feeding himself. Other writers have suggested lots of great little bits for him. I'll add a few: Microwave or bake a sweet potato and cut it into small cubes (or just try mashing it with a fork until it's smooth and thick). Our pediatrician suggested large-curd cottage cheese at our 12 month appointment, and my daughter LOVES it. It's messy, but it's one of her favorite foods. She'll also eat little cubes of firm tofu. As someone else said, banana and avacado are great, as are bits of ripe pear and peeled zucchini.

Later, you can try more firm food, and don't worry about the teeth too much. With 3 up and 2 down, my daughter can eat finely minced chicken, defrosted frozen peas, beans, rice, small noodles, cut up berries, just to name a few. I'm starting to cut her food in a shape like french fries now so she can use her biter teeth. And she's starting to feed herself from a spoon now, too. Be patient, and try frequently. Your little guy will get around to it.

When we were teaching our baby to eat more solid foods we would put it through a garlic press. Chicken worked particularly well. The press mashes it nicely without chunks, then we shredded it, then tore it into small bits....
The garlic press was great because we could feed her what we ate and control how much she was getting. Good luck!

Super Baby Foods by Ruth Yaron. Check it out from the library or go get a used copy. It's a great resource. You can skip the first part probably about the benefits of waiting to start solids and the developmental stuff, but the middle section is great at any age! There's a glossary of foods, how to know if they're ripe, how to prepare, how to store, etc. It's really a great resource. If you're looking for quick ideas, here's some things we fed our daughter at 15 months that she handled well:

yogurt, cottage cheese, string cheese (cut in 1/2 lengthwise so it's not round), tofu strips, soy chicken nuggests, beans (kidney, black, pinto, garbanzo), peas, corn, carrots, zuchinni strips, cheerios, kix cereal, bread raisins, banana, apple (sauce too), kiwi, diced mango, lasagna (cut pretty small to about diced), etc.

My son is 16 months old and has been eating chunky food since he was about 9 months. He still sometimes coughs and chokes on his food. I feel like it happens almost once a day. I think there is just a learning curve. I think if you keep giving him soft chunky foods he will learn how to gum them and safely get them swollowed. Hang in there, he'll get it.

I would suggest that you use food that are almost pureed. Leave just a few lumps in them (I am assuming that you are making your own baby foods.) Gradually add more lumps and more variety to your son's foods.

My daughter-in-law first gave my granddaughter avocado and sent me the picture. My what a picture and I couldn't believe what I saw. Later I read or heard that it is an almost perfect food. And if you pick a perfectly ripe avocado it might do the trick.

Hello,
Cheerios are great. Puffs (inexpensive at Wal-Mart, Target) and they come in veggies and fruit. They disolve even better than Cheerios.
He can eat most everything now, just make sure to cut it up tiny (even those baby fruit jars - sometimes that fruit is way too big). At 15 months my kids also like cheese (string cheese worked great because it's soft), lunchmeat, bananas. Once he gets past the texture, he'll do great :)

We loved 'mum-mum' crackers as a first food. They are very light, dissolve quickly into almost nothing. Tofu also we found was something that our daughter could pick up and feed herself with but even the firm brand was easily chewed and swallowed without choking. Pinto or black beans well cooked and but in half were also easily picked up and chewed. Gerber also makes some fruit/vegetable puffs which also quickly disolve and are a great finger food. Good luck!

I just recently read that many babies have a hard time with pureed food with chunks in it. Those foods require a baby to swallow a liquid while chewing a solid. I recommend banana, avocado, soft cheese, Cheerios, cooked sweet potato. He'll quickly learn to gum his foods, regardless of the number of teeth.

I can understand your fear after seeing him choke before. I can tell you that I'd wished I'd bought stock in Cherrios when our kids were young, though! lol Surprisingly, they literally dissolve in their mouths. It's a perfect starter food! I did a lot of green beans (either frozen from our garden or canned from the store) and chopped them to pea sized and put them on their food tray (insert on the high chair, priceless!). Peas n carrots were an easy food, to. Small pasta maybe w/just some melted butter/salt on it or a bit of mild spaghetti sauce. Yes, it's "messy", but they loveeeeeed it! It's a great dinner right before bath time. :) lol Depending on allergies in your family, a peanut butter sandwich (just p. butter, spread thinly, folded and then ripped into small bite sized pieces) was also a hit for something different.

If he doesn't seem ready to "do it himself", just start by putting it on his tray and put it out for him to take from you first or if need be, put a bit in his mouth and then act like you are busy a few feet from him. See if he doesn't love it and want to get more to his mouth. :) I also did cooked apple bites to soften them and cooled. Peaches/pears chopped to small bites was great. Cottage cheese... messy but sometimes good.

I also chopped up grapes into 1/4's and the loved them and helped with their constipation issues! :) lol As long as they are chopped, they can't choke on them and they slide right down and are sweet. We learned real quick that we had to offer the vegetable, then the meat/protein and then the fruits. If I didn't offer it in that order, they would fill up on the fruit or just not want to eat any of the veggie after the sweetness of the fruits. I vividly remember my oldest (before she was fourteen month when we first moved) grabbing handfuls of green beans with her chubby little hands and gobbling them up! :) Such a great feeling to see my lil ones eating their veggies up and loving them. To this day, I let them pick the veggie for dinner (most of the time) and they eat pretty much all of them, from broccoli to asparagus and occasionally some yummy home grown frozen corn. *slurp! Just a little bit goes a long way. I found out that I was trying to get them each to eat 1/4 to 1/2 cup of veggies at dinner and they didn't need that much according to their docs.

At 13mos both of my kids were off of baby food completely. I think it's a messy, time consuming transition, but just remember it's just that. It'll end soon and he'll be spoon his own food soon. I used the baby wash clothes, paper towels and baby wipes a lot, but it's how they learned to be good eaters. :) Good luck! I hope you find what works best for you soon. :)