Choking

[dvansmom]

I have been feeding ds solids since about 6 months, he will be 10 months tomorrow. I give him sweet potatoes and some jarred baby foods. He doesn't seem to love them just eats a few bites. Most of it I make myself. I still worry about choking. When I give him the gerber puffs he is ok and most of the time with cheerios. He is very interested in everything we eat and I want to give it to him. He just seems to choke so much. He only has 4 teeth so far. Is there anything you did to help with chewing more? I want to introduce more foods to him but worry so much.

[HMDocsLady]

We have been giving DD solids for a few weeks daily now. It takes practice for them to figure out how to swallow down the right tube an how to not stuff too much in thier mouths at once. DD *loves* cheerios, but I have to limit the number I put in front of her because she will grab a huge handful and stuff it all in her mouth and try to swollow it all - then she will hack some of it up and figure it out. She also likes bananas, kiwi, sweet potato, white potato, brown rice, carrot, mashed peas, freeze dried pineapple, pasta, tomatoes. We just give her a little of what we are eating. I started her on jarred food, but it was so expensive and really didn't taste very good, so we stopped pretty fast.

The key is to make sure the foods are really soft and in small enough pieces - no larger than the size of the quick on your pinky finger ( the size of a pea or smaller - but mash up peas)