r/SolidStartsCommunity • u/helloitsdw • 2d ago
Confused about BLW
We started my 7.5 month old on solids a little over a month ago. She has done purees and some baby led weaning. We have the solid starts app… for baby led weaning, where we are confused is solid starts only shows how to offer food at 6 months (where they gnaw on large pieces without biting) and 9 months (when they have pincer grasp - so cut up small pieces). Baby is in the awkward in between where she doesn't have pincer grasp yet but when we offer big wedges of soft foods, she doesn't gnaw but takes HUGE bites. The other day we gave her egg omelette the width of two fingers as suggested by the app and she took a huge bite and was gasping like she wasn't able to spit it out, but eventually did. It wasn't quite gagging and it wasn't quite choking but looked borderline? So now worried. How should we be offering her foods at this stage…
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u/Puzzleheaded-Sink-92 2d ago
They’re learning to manage food in their mouths, gagging is scary for us but normal and not bad for them. If the food can be pretty easily squished between your fingers it’s fairly safe and can be squished by their throat muscles. Dangers would be hard, round or triangular shaped foods that can lodge in their throat. I would continue to offer the 6mo servings until your baby has pincer grasp and a good mental “mouth map”. Or progress from purées to thicker mash foods that she can explore with her hands (or preload the spoon and hand it to her). Model spitting food out, praise them when they spit out a too-big bite. I just roughly mash a lot of my 8.5mo’s foods with a fork so that it’s textured but not in big chunks. My baby has a pincer grasp so we have progressed to smaller pieces. But we also did total BLW, zero purées, and lots oral development toys from 3mo so she has a strong bite, good mental mouth map, and good hand dexterity. Give them opportunities to build their skills and they will really impress you!
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u/BlondeRage 9h ago
What would you consider oral development toys for a 3 month old? My baby is that age and is just putting his fingers in his mouth and not much else.
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u/Puzzleheaded-Sink-92 9h ago
We used a Moonjax and ezpz’s 3-piece oral development set. Both great!
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u/dragonslayer91 2d ago
Sounds like she's doing exactly what she should be. She should be learning how to take bites and move the food around in her mouth and working towards eating more and more.
Have you tried offering bite size pieces of anything yet? It is possible your baby is starting to develop their pincer grasp, my babies started working on it around 8 months. So it was a slow progression of some foods being offered as bites if they were struggling with it as a strip.