Help & reassurance please BLWers!

[Salt Air]

Hi all
So my LO just turned 8 months. We've been doing mostly BLW with a bit of spoon feeding (mostly at breakfast, as I struggle with ideas as he is allergic to dairy & wheat & we've been told not to try egg or soya for now)
Up til now he's been doing really well. But the last couple of weeks it feels like we're going backwards. Instead of holding the food & gnawing it or biting bits off he's shoving the whole lot in. This has lead to loads more gagging occurrences, much worse than at the start! My OH panics everytime & mealtimes are getting stressful.
His pincer grip is getting better but I don't know whether to give him smaller pieces of food (worried he'll choke/gag on those) or carry on with more 'chip' shaped things. I don't want to stop doing BLW, and I don't think LO will let us anyway as he's starting fussing with spoon feeding & the couple of times I tried purée he has just clamped his mouth shut after 1 mouthful.
But what can I do to reassure myself & my OH? And is there anything I can do to stop my LO shovelling it all in, or do I just need to wait & let him figure it out? (& try not to have a heart attack in the meantime!)
Thanks in advance for any tips!

 

[Rachel_C]

It's just a case of waiting really. If your OH panics, I'd honestly just send him out of the room! If LO is gagging, you don't need to do anything at all and really shouldn't try to fish out whatever he's gagging on as then he won't learn to deal with it himself. I'd guess his recent increase is just down to being excited about the food or being hungry and realising that the faster he shoves it in his mouth, the sooner he feels full! You could try having meals/snacks a little earlier in case it's real hunger, which might slow him down a bit.

I also wouldn't worry about small pieces of food. His gag reflex is a long way forward so he'd gag out anything that he doesn't want there. IMO it's safer to introduce things now so he learns how to handle them while he has that inbuilt safety mechanism. We never limited ourselves to stick shaped foods although they featured more heavily early on. What about things like mince, rice etc? He doesn't need a perfect pincer grip to eat them, he can grab a fist full and mash it into his mouth... still my 2 year old's favourite method when she's starving . You can also give him a spoon and teach him to stir the food. Try different spoons; we found that things like bolognese or mashed potato stick best to some small plastic spoons we have so even if LO can't scoop food, stirring/dipping is enough to get some food.

 

[Salt Air]

Thank you, that's helpful He doesn't *seem* that hungry before but maybe I'll try doing it a bit earlier. We do do rice pasta & mince in sauce & he loves that. I haven't tried rice yet though, so I will this week. I guess if I overcook it slightly so it's sticky that might help him?
I like the idea of sending the OH out, haha! Funnily enough he doesn't really gag at breakfast or lunch when it's just the two of us, only at dinner time when we're all three. OH thinks LO is choking everytime, so I've tried to explain the difference between choking & gagging, but I can see why he worries because it is a bit scary.

 

[MindUtopia]

I think it might just be a matter of giving it some time and yes, sending your OH away sometimes if he's hovering too much. I actually find the hovering and overthinking it all makes mealtimes not go as smoothly. Sometimes even just sitting down to eat with my daughter makes her a bit fussy and there are days when I actually just have to pretend to busy myself around the kitchen so she doesn't feel as watched and then she eats much more happily.

We actually tend to have the opposite, my daughter has always been a very petite eater. She was slow to gain weight in the beginning and even when we switched to bottles ate much less than other babies the same age. Even now, she will try everything, but doesn't always seem to eat lots, just very tiny bites and a lot falls back out. But she's doing fine. It's coming out the other end and her bottles are decreasing so she's obviously eating.

I think just shoulder on with it. As long as he's not actually choking (gagging is fine), he's doing great. If you are concerned about him actually being able to eat but don't want to or can't do spoon feeding, I've found making smoothies to be a really easy way to let my daughter get food in when she's hungry even if she's not doing so well that day with picking things up to feed herself. Might have to be a bit more creative if you are avoiding dairy, but it can be done. I just use some pureed fruit and mix it in a cup with a little yogurt and a splash of milk, but you could use fruit just with some rice milk to cut out the dairy. Then I help her hold the cup and put a straw in it and she slurps it right up. It might be something you could feed that gives him some control as an alternative to spoon feeding but that won't make your OH too nervous.

Also, something I found is that things often tend to take a step back before they move forward with BLW. Usually just when you have a few days when you get frustrated, then something clicks and they make a huge leap forward developmentally with self-feeding. It's a process, but worth it.