Weaning help!! 😞

Would highly recommended the solid starts app. It's brilliant and shows video examples of babies at different ages eating a directory of foods, recommends how to serve them, what to expect etc

Ps - everything you've said, gumming food, dropping it etc is completely normal. They are learning to coordinate bringing food to their mouth, using their jaws and the concept of chewing - with or without teeth.

The Charlotte sterling reed book has some great recipes and tips for how to prepare different food so it’s safe for babies to eat whilst getting used to different textures

Interested in this post as i am struggling with ideas for my 8 month too. Plus I'm scared like you about giving him more proper food. He only has one tooth too x

I’m also worried. I literally blend all of my LO food as I’m so worried to start him on bigger bits of food for the fear of choking! 😭

For breakfast, my little one has porridge with peanut butter (smooth, no added salt or sugar) and raspberries or banana. Lunches, he's been doing well on plain omelette cut into sticks or bite size pieces. Another good one has been mashed potato with some grated cheese on the side. We're just getting started with dinners, he has been enjoying pureed veggies but I'm going to start trying meals that we can all eat together.

Like you, I’ve been extremely nervous and did just purées until 8 months and have just recently started on finger foods, though I’ll only offer those when my husband is also home as my anxiety is still through the roof with it! I give him mashed foods or textured purées with every meal as we find that he doesn’t take as much in with finger foods and at least he’ll take a couple of spoonfuls of the puree, or it at least gives us something to dip the finger food in to soften it. He’s not seemingly enjoying solids so anything we can get him to swallow gives us peace of mind he’s had something. We’ve found that toast is a good one as he can suck on it, roasted veg, broccoli, meatballs. He seems to prefer feeding himself with the finger foods but is still struggling with it as we find soft foods break apart in his hands before he can get them to him mouth and he struggles to eat them, so anything like pancakes, banana, avocado etc. he really struggles with.

@Harriet sounds like your little one is doing so well! Nice work! So you know, most babies gag whilst eating finger foods. It's a necessary part of their learning and not choking at all. A lot of people perceive it as struggling with food, but it's a totally natural development as they learn the mouth feels of chunks in their mouth: https://solidstarts.com/gagging/