When you start solid with your baby, drowning and moaning is always the biggest concern. Choking is perhaps the number one reason why parents do not give the baby weaning the opportunity and decide not to introduce finger food from the beginning. This is a crucial issue and I wanted to cover everything you need to know so that you can keep the baby safe and have more confidence with solids.
Stay calm and confident in lunch
You want to cultivate a pleasant experience for your baby at lunch so that they develop a healthy food relationship. You and your baby are very connected, so your baby will be able to feel if lunch is not a relaxed experience for you. Whether you decide to import fingers from the beginning or after a few months of puree, knowledge and understanding of the ingredients of safe nutrition is critical so that you are able to remain calm and confident while starting solid with your baby.
The difference between choking, throttle and cough
Drowning is silent
The drowning is completely silent and occurs when something completely prevents the airway. In fact I have never heard of a baby drowning with baby weaning when parents and carers are well educated in safety of size, shape and texture of food.
Gagging & Coughing can really be beneficial
The stadium and cough, on the other hand, can be very noisy and quite dramatic. Babies can be hit and cough frequently when the fingers start because the reflex gag in the younger baby’s mouth is quite far forward and moving back as they grow older. This serves as a safety mechanism against drowning while learning to eat and helps them to launch anything quickly if needed. A baby’s gag reflexes starts to move back around 6-8 m and should be completely back to the point where an adult would be about 12m.
Babies also have more tasty goals back in their mouths, which go forward as they grow older, because milk is delivered from the chest or bottle, exclusively in the first half of their lives.
Gagging may be scary but it is safe
Gagging can be quite scary for parents to witness because it may be so dramatic, but it is actually a widespread incident and is part of a baby learning process. Gagging helps babies begin to understand size and shape that foods should be so that they can be safely swallowed.
Safe food
The baby should always sit upright and have complete control of all foods in and out of their mouths. It is advisable not to try to get any food from your baby’s mouth when they tear down. Instead, it is best to let your baby’s natural reflex push the food out. The same is true if they eat a piece of food that you feel is too big for them or if they put too much food in their mouths at the same time. This is due to the fact that if you put a finger in their mouths to try to help them get out of the food, you could possibly push the food behind the reflex gag, increasing the potential risk of drowning. That is why it is only important to offer babies safe food.
READING: Baby’s first food food: size, shape, texture and taste
Vomiting while eating
Some babies may vomit when they learn to eat, and that could happen for some reasons. If the baby beats vigorously, vomiting is the next natural reflex that helps them completely cleanse the food from their passage. Vomiting acts as a safety mechanism and is a very beneficial reflex.
You may worry about seeing a baby throw up, because when adults throw up, they are associated with nausea or feeling sick. Although you have seen a baby throw up while eating, you probably have noticed that they are generally careless. You will watch them take a breath, then turn around and continue eating in the next breath, as if nothing ever happened.
Why don’t I suggest thick puree
Babies are often fed smooth Runny puree first and then inserted into thick puree before the fingers. However, thick dense may not be necessary and could possibly delay the developmental benefits of confidence.
Babies suck them clean from a spoon without chewing, in the same way, sucking breast milk. Thus, a coarse puree could potentially activate a baby’s reflex, making it more likely to tear down or possibly even vomiting.
Parents are then led to believe that babies should not be ready for fingers of the fingers, because they cannot even consume massive spirits without tearing down. But the truth is that thick puree is more likely to make the baby gag than safe fingers. They are only the thick ones that are problematic in the early stages. For babies with a delicate gag reflex, it may be best to wait to offer puree with a more coarse consistency until the baby is comfortable with finger foods and can successfully handle food in their mouths.
Babies that store food on the cheeks
One last point I will do is for ‘squirreling’. I think I have done this term, as I haven’t heard anyone else mention it, but it’s when babies store food in their cheeks after eating.
Squirrel can happen for some reasons, but one of the most common reasons is whether the food is too hard or fibrous. Babies will sometimes store food on their cheeks to soften, but you may not know that they still have food in their mouths.
If you lie down for a diaper change after a meal, food on the side of their mouth can make their way back in their mouths, which could cause cough, moaning and possibly vomiting or drowning. So, after a food, give the baby’s cheeks a little compression to see if they store any food there.
On a review
The cough and the range are normal and safe – but the drowning, which is silent, is not.
And it’s important to know the difference.
To gain more confidence
CPR: You can gain confidence from taking a CPR course, although the drowning is absolutely unlikely if you feed the baby-Safe Foods. However, the knowledge gained through a CPR course would be beneficial if the baby could get something from the floor that could potentially prevent their airway.
