What finger foods can my 7 mos old eat? What's a choking hazard?

Isn’t 7 months much too young for any kind of finger foods? You need to have teeth before you can eat things that must be chewed.

It’s been a long while since I needed to know an infant’s developmental timetable, but I would think your baby should still be getting strained foods for some time yet.

Babies don’t usually eat finger foods until 8 to 9 months. Here is some information for you. Most people start with Cheerios.

Look into Babyled Weaning. It’s much better than giving kids all kinds of “baby food” or even Cheerios. With my first I did full-on BLW but with my second I did a mix of real food and the food packets that are everywhere now. It helps babies learn how to deal with food way better than mush. http://www.babyledweaning.com/

The gist is once babies can hold food you can give them fist-size hunks of soft cooked foods like sweet potatoes or steamed pears. You don’t need teeth to mash up a soft cooked food with gums. And it helps babies develop a gag reflex earlier than home or processed baby food.

But, yeah, if you are going the mainstream route and using mass-produced “baby food” you usually need to wait till babies are at crawling stage, around 9 mos, before giving finger foods like Cheerios or those baby puffs.

Pretty much everything that’s not soft and gushy (or given in one of those little food bag things that let you feed a baby crunchy things like apples) is a choking hazard at 7 mos! But especially hard crunchy things (crackers) and big round things (grapes) and sticky things (raisins, candy) are choking hazards for a long time.

At seven months, my daughter was more interested in breastfeeding than eating still. I did give her many different mashed foods – butternut squash, avocado, banana were big hits. She spent more time playing with the food than eating it. I let her get totally messy with it so she would think of food as something fun. She is now one of the least picky eaters I know for her age.

Which teeth have come in?

Everything is a choking hazard. Make sure you don’t leave them alone that young. Think about it, any of us can choke on anything while we are eating. Taking in a deep breath while eating, talking, sneezing, swallowing badly, all can cause us to choke. Infants more likely than adults.

I would think cereal is your best bet.

I gave my guys, when they were four months old and starting to teeth, small, slightly crispy mini slices of bagel. They easily gummed them.

I have a photo of my son, then five months old, having his first lick of a vanilla ice cream. It was clear that a sweet tooth was genetically encoded.

We also used peas and cheerios, mainly as distractions rather than nutritional objects.

Rice cakes were the thing recommended here. They basically dissolve in the mouth and you buy the most basic ones, perhaps they are labeled ‘unflavored, low sodium’ in the US. It gets the baby’s hand/eye/mouth coordination going.

Babies ACTUALLY have a better gag reflex than us adults, up to about the age of 9 months. http://www.babycenter.com/0_gagging-in-babies_9197.bc

My 6 month old eats cheerios, cooked peas, and bits of pinched off foods like avocado, banana and bread in addition to his pureed foods. He also likes to lick ice. I always sit right with him while he has food (or anything in his mouth). He’s a bit young to successfully get them into his mouth, so I usually feed him the pureed food and then give him bits to play with and put some in his mouth for him while the rest of us are eating.

The baby led weaning information is great. You may also want to consider something like this.

Your baby will gag on foods that are not able to be swallowed, and then push them out with the tongue. But still make sure to always be right there while the baby is eating.

Always make sure to talk to your pediatrician for advice.

The goal at this age is not “nutrition” (because that comes from breastmilk or formula) but to accustom your child to different tastes and textures and instill an interest in eating a variety of foods. For example, I avoid white potatoes and (mostly) meat for myself… but I feed them to the baby so that he can experience many, many tastes and textures.