What finger food is everyone feeding their baby?

Janie - posted on 09/23/2012

Having read many articles about using Bagels, I tried one and it ended up stuck to the roof of his mouth, with him gagging. He is 9 mo. old with six teeth, but "I" am apparently not ready for Bagels. Jackson does love my sweet pototoes, carrots, bananas, peaches, squash.

His father is convinced putting an ounce or two of rice cereal in with the homemade veggies/fruit meals is going to make him fat. I find it helps when adjusting from puree to chunky meals, any one have knowledge about rice cereal and possible weight gain?

Michelle - posted on 08/21/2010

My daughter is starting to eat more and more finger foods lately and this is what we have tried so far:
green beans
banana
toast
carrots
cucumber (cut length wise and quartered into long sticks)
cheerios or rice crispies
scrambled eggs
spaghetti (I use the small alphabet shapes)
potato
mango
cantelope (I cut it into wedges and leave the rind on so she can hold onto it without it slipping out of her hands)
Stale bagels (she loves these and i think it helps her with teething)
small sweet peas
watermelon
i've also given her fish.....i use sole. I am planning on making her some meatballs this weekend and seeing how those go. Some of the things she tries, toast being one of them, she does have a harder time with and she gags because she tries to put so much in her mouth. so I end up breaking it into small pieces for her.

Kimberly - posted on 02/11/2010

You don't say how old your baby is, but when my older son was starting solids, at 6 months, I just started with the typical rice cereal and then quickly added pureed veggies. I waited to give him fruit for about a month, and then it was steamed and pureed. But around 7 or 8 months (I think...it's so hard to remember!) I gave him steamed petite green peas, little squares of tofu (about the size of my pinky fingernail), little squares of cooked yams, steamed fruits (or raw if they were very soft, like bananas or really ripe peaches.) I also felt comfortable letting my son have pieces of the large curd cottage cheese or broken up cooked egg yolk or sometimes even egg white. We don't have allergies in our family, so didn't have to take a lot of food precautions. I guess the pieces I gave him were always about the size of a pea, or no bigger than my pinkie fingernail (I keep my fingernails cut short, lol!) :) You'll see as he gets older that he can handle larger pieces.



This is going to sound awful, but I also read somewhere that occasionally your kid will sort of gag and choke on foods and that you should kind of let them deal with it a little bit on their own. It helps them learn to eat and swallow, and also learn in the long run to take smaller bites. My husband and I had a hard time with this, but would let him try on his own for 5 to 10 seconds before we'd give him a good whack or two on the back to clear anything he was struggling with. He's now a really good eater at 22 months old.