Baby choking because she doesn’t know how to slow down!!!!

Hi everyone! So my baby is 12 months old. Since the start of her weaning journey, pretty much all her food has been really mashed up and we never did BLW. We’ve started to introduce different textures and I aim to move away from mashed up food a bit more because I just feel like I’ll be spoon feeding her or mashing her food up until she’s bloody 16 years old🤣 She has porridge for breakfast every morning, for lunch she sometimes has toast but mainly she just has yoghurt and stuff from jars. She’s had roast dinners before (just broccoli and carrots mixed with gravy), mashed potatoes, curry (korma so it’s mild), baked beans and some dinner foods from pouches. But I do want to try and add some more foods that aren’t mashed or tiny like rice and beans are. However, and I promise you I am not exaggerating when I say this, she tries to stuff the whole thing in her mouth at once and swallow it without chewing! Today for example, she tried to stuff an entire toast soldier in her mouth and I had to scoop it out! Should I just continue to mash it all up or is there anything I can do to teach her to just slowwww down? She obviously likes her food! 🤣 But she will literally try and eat an entire thing without chewing. It terrifies me! Also, does anyone have any dinner ideas? I feel like I make the same 4 things every week

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I’d say unfortunately you’re just gonna have to let her figure it out. The best way for babies to learn how to chew, how much they should be putting in their mouths, etc, is by letting them explore foods and letting them resolve it on their own. She’s used to mashed foods and that’s probably why she’s shoving things in her mouth and just trying to swallow them, because you don’t need to chew mashed up foods so she’s not used to it, if that makes sense? Sorry if this wasn’t much help 😅

@Levi no that makes perfect sense and it is helpful! I’m just so scared! 🥺😂 I think I might just have to bite the bullet and just watch her really carefully. It’s just so scary!

@Becky I get it, I was really nervous when I started giving my son finger foods 😅 I did a lot of research on it to learn the difference between gagging and choking which helped a lot. They have a lot of natural protection against choking, including a strong gag reflex. Trust your baby, you’ll both be okay. Good luck ☺️

@Levi thank you so much! I’ll have a better look into gagging and choking🩷

@Levi hey! Just wanted to say I took your advice and bit the bullet! Today my baby had some toast soldiers and fruit for her lunch. She didn’t like the fruit lol but she had a toast soldier, did put quite a bit in her mouth but I watched her very carefully of course. But no problems! She ate the whole toast solider without choking. She did gag but I decided to just wait and see if she could learn to chew it by herself.

@Becky aww, I’m glad she did so well! Proud of you both. It will get easier as she learns ☺️

@Levi thank you! Definitely going to continue with this and hopefully in a few months she’ll be super confident with it🥰

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