finger foods

My babies will be 10 months this week and the only thing I give them is shredded cheese and puffs. I'm so afraid to give them anything else because they freaking choke on puffs all the time. What are some foods that you started with? Oh, and neither of them have any teeth yet but not sure if that is an issue or not. Thanks!

Lori

 

I'm not having much luck finding things they will eat. I give puffs, cheerios, and mummums regularly and they love them. I will give them bits of beans, rice, noodles, etc off my plate and they are fine but when it's on their tray it doesn't go over well at all. I've tried mushed up pieces of banana, tiny pieces of peaches, stage 3 foods, wagon wheels and they just gag whether from the taste, texture or size I have no clue.

Mamaw is visiting this next week and figuring out this finger food thing is her job while she's here

 

I give them cheerios, crackers and fruit at this point. HTH .

 

Mashed banana or avocado, peach slices in a mesh feeder, very soft pasta noodles.

If they are still choking a bit on the puffs, just stick to the softest, mushiest foods you can give them.

 

Cooked and diced potato, banana, cheerios that are a little mushy (after soaking in some formula), peaches, cut up green beans, etc.

I start with mushy foods and then move to more crunchy things. FWIW I was terrified of puffs because they are SO big and actually started with cheerios broken in half when we started crunchy foods. GL!

 

We will be 11 months next week and we do mostly fruit and veggies finger food. For veggies it's carrots, sweet potato, peas, green beans, brocolli, cauliflower and anything else that seems soft enough. Fruit is bananas, soft fresh pear or canned pear (the canned peaches were a little tough for us), apple chunks cooked until soft with a little water and cinnamon, watermelon.
One trick I read is to coat the pieces in Cheerios crumbs to make them easier to pick up.
For egg, I finally got them to eat it last night when I gave them fried rice with veggies and bits of egg yolk. Crumbled hard boiled yolk and plain fried yolk were not a hit. So I guess I can now add rice to the finger food menu.
I had also been giving them bits of pasta, toast, mum mums, teething biscuits and Cheerios, but we recently went dairy and wheat free (to try to control excema) and so they are now all off the menu. I did discover plain rice cakes break up quite well and they have no problems with them. I watched them like a hawk the first few times though.

One of my boys was into self feeding right away and the other needed a lot of time to warm to the idea. I would let one self feed and then put the finger food into the mouth of the other one. Sometimes when they start to make the choking sound I talk or sing to them to get their minds off the lump in their mouth. It often distracts them enough to swallow.

 

soft banana
soft tofu in small pieces
baked peaches cut and no skin
string cheese cut into small pieces
cheerios
small bits of mandarin oranges from the can
small pieces of shredded chicken
dieced and cooked sweet potatoes

Honestly, I don't like puffs at this point, they gag on them a lot for some reason! I also don't like the teething biscuits as I've had to pull them out of the back of their throats!

 

Ours loved:

sweet potato fries
ditalini pasta
lentil beans
green beans
rotissirie chicken

 

My boys are 10 months old and we've been doing finger foods for quite some time now. I'm lucky in the sense that they took to it right away-and LOVE feeding themselves and hae had no trouble eating the foods they are given...Here's what they've had thus far...

Fruits:
watermelon
peaches(canned and fresh)
pears(canned and fresh)
plums
nectarines
bananas

Veggies:
corn
asparagus
peas
green beans
wax beans
beans
carrots
potatoes

Meat:
chicken
pork
turkey(deli meat)
ham(deli meat)
meatballs

What else??

Pasta
Fish
Mac-n-cheese
hot dog(skin off)
rice

They've tried lobster/crab(GROSS!), I should say swallowed it!

Honestly-any thing we have-they have had it/tried it. Cheerios, puffs, goldfish cracker(HUGE HIT-and they make baby sized ones...), etc. Anthony has 6 teeth-and Nicholas' 2 bottom teeth JUST came through. So-he's been gumming all of that food from the beginning!

Oh yeah-and it's all soft/mushy/cut up small!

 

Thanks Ladies! I've tried cutting up tiny pieces of peaches, watermelon, and bananas but they kept choking. How, I don't know. They were so small, I'm surprised they could pick it up. I've done fruit in those mess things but it's not the same. I'll just keep trying and have a million heart attacks until they get it!

 

I just wanted to mention that the speech/ language pathologist said if you cut the food up too small (which is what I was doing) they can choke easily because they can't feel where the food is in their mouth. It's scary, though!