Baby chokes on finger foods

How to prevent your babies from choking on finger foods - CHOC

CHOC experts offer advice to parents for preventing choking hazards when their babies start self-feeding with finger foods.

Published: April 25, 2022
Last updated: November 11, 2022

Link: https://health.choc.org/how-to-prevent-your-babies-from-choking-on-finger-foods/

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At around 6 months of age, parents can begin introducing solid foods to their babies. This is an important step to help them learn new tastes and textures, get nutrients and develop healthy eating habits.

By the time babies are 9 months old, they will have developed the fine motor skills — the small, precise movements — needed to pick up small pieces of food and feed themselves.

With these new skills, babies can start practicing self-feeding — but parents need to stay alert about possible choking hazards. Here, CHOC experts offer tips to prevent choking hazards and foods to stay away from.

Why self-feeding is important

You may notice that your baby can take hold of food (and other small objects) between their forefinger and thumb in a pincer grasp. The pincer grasp may start out a little clumsy, but with practice soon becomes a real skill.

Let your child self-feed as much as possible. You’ll still help by spoon feeding cereal and other important dietary elements. But encouraging finger feeding helps your child develop independent, healthy eating habits.

Learn more nutrition tips for infants.

Finger feeding — and later, using utensils — gives babies some control over what they eat and how much. Sometimes they’ll eat the food, sometimes not, and that’s all part of the process of learning self-regulation. Even little kids can tell when they’re hungry or full, and finger feeding can help them learn to recognize and respond to these cues.

How to prevent choking when your baby is eating finger foods

When your baby is self-feeding with finger foods, it’s important to keep a close eye on them to ensure their safety. Here are some mealtime strategies to help prevent your child from choking:

Have your child sit in a highchair or other safe place while eating.
Prevent your child from lying down, crawling or walking while eating. Make sure they are sitting up.
Avoid letting your child eat in the car or stroller.
Keep mealtimes calm. Avoid distractions, disruptions and rushing when eating.
Always pay close attention to what your child puts in their mouth.
Watch your child at all times while they are eating.

What should my 6- to 12-month-old baby eat?

Although it means more work for whoever makes the meals for the family, dishes often can be adapted for the baby. For instance, your little one can have some of the zucchini you’re making for dinner. Cook that serving a bit longer — until it’s soft — and cut it into pieces small enough for the baby to handle. Pieces of ripe banana, well-cooked pasta and small pieces of chicken are other good choices.

To determine if a food item is suitable for your baby, try a bite first and ask yourself:

Does it melt in the mouth? Some dry cereals and crackers that are light and flaky will melt in the mouth.
Is it cooked enough so that it mushes easily? Well-cooked veggies and fruits will mush easily, as will canned fruit and vegetables (choose ones without added sugar or salt).
Is it soft? Cottage cheese, shredded cheese and small pieces of tofu are good examples.
Can it be gummed? Pieces of ripe banana and well-cooked pasta can be easily mashed in the gums of your baby.
Is it small enough? Food should be cut into small pieces. The sizes will vary depending on the food’s texture. A piece of chicken, for instance, needs to be smaller than a piece of watermelon, which even a pair of baby gums will quickly smash.

If your child doesn’t like a kind of food, don’t let that stop you from offering it at future meals. Kids are naturally slow to accept new tastes and textures. For example, some are more sensitive to texture and may reject coarse foods, such as meat. When introducing meat, it’s helpful to start with well-cooked ground meats or shreds of thinly sliced deli meats, such as turkey.

Present your baby with a variety of foods, even some that he or she didn’t seem to like the week before. Don’t force your baby to eat, but realize that it can take 10 or more tries before a child will accept a new food.

Read CHOC’s ultimate guide for starting solid foods.

Choking hazards for babies to avoid

There are specific types of food that should be avoided when feeding your baby. Foods that are potential choking hazards include:

Pieces of raw vegetables or hard fruits.
Whole grapes, berries, cherry or grape tomatoes. Instead, peel and slice or cut in quarters.
Raisins and other dried fruit.
Peanuts, nuts and seeds.
Large scoops of peanut butter and other nut or seed butters. A thin layer is OK though.
Whole hot dogs and sausages. Peel and cut these into very small pieces.
Untoasted bread, especially white bread that sticks together
Chunks of cheese or meat.
Candy, such as hard candy, jellybeans, gummies and chewing gum.
Popcorn, pretzels, corn chips and other snack foods.
Marshmallows.

These foods aren’t safe and may cause your child to choke. Many healthcare providers suggest these foods be saved until after your child is age 3 or 4.

The same way your baby can pick up food with their pincher grasp, they may also try to pick up and eat small items around your house. Pick up anything off the floor that might be dangerous to swallow, like deflated balloons, pen caps, coins, beads and batteries. Make sure to keep toys or gadgets with small parts out of reach.

What to do if your baby begins choking

Parents should call 911 for any serious choking situation.

There are several possible situations you might face if your baby begins choking. Here are some tips on how to handle them:

If your baby is choking and coughing but can breathe and make sounds:

Fortunately, this means the airway is not completely blocked. It’s best to do nothing. Watch the child carefully and make sure they recover completely. The child will likely be fine after a good coughing spell.

Don’t reach into the mouth to grab the object or even pat the child on the back. Either of these steps could push the object farther down the airway and make the situation worse.

Stay with the child and remain calm until the episode passes.

Learn more first aid tips for your home from CHOC experts.

If your baby is conscious but can’t breathe, make noise or is turning blue:

Call 911 or tell someone nearby to call 911 immediately. This situation calls for abdominal thrusts if you’ve been trained to do so. If you haven’t been trained, and no one else is available who has been, wait until help arrives.

If the child was choking and is now unconscious and no longer breathing:

Shout for help and call 911, or tell someone nearby to call 911 immediately.

Start CPR right away, if you’ve been trained in it. If you have not been trained, and no one else is available who has been, wait until help arrives.

CPR and first-aid courses are a must for parents, other caregivers and babysitters. To find one in your area, contact your local American Red Cross, YMCA, American Heart Association chapter or other community resources.

For more health and wellness resources from the pediatric experts at CHOC, sign up for the Kids Health newsletter.

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Unfortunately, many kids get infected with respiratory illnesses in the fall and winter seasons. CHOC experts highly encourage all eligible members of households to receive their annual flu shots. Other preventative measures like good hygiene and staying home when sick can help protect families from illness. The following articles and guides provide more information.

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What You Need to Know

Terrified that baby-led weaning or feeding will cause your child to choke on solid foods? Here’s 8 tips to prevent choking when baby-led weaning, plus a list of foods to avoid.

Want to read this post in a visual way? Check out my Google web story on Top Tips to Prevent Choking when Baby Led Weaning.

Baby-led weaning is a very popular–and now almost mainstream–way to introduce your baby to solids. Essentially, baby-led weaning is skipping purees and spoon feeding altogether and allowing your baby feed herself with finger foods. Your baby eats with you during family meal times–and often even family foods–right from the start, around six months of age.

The potential benefits of baby-led weaning are:

There are many benefits to baby-led weaning listed in my comprehensive guide.

But, won’t my baby choke?

A common concern is that baby will choke on solid foods. Now, choking is serious business, and although it’s very rare, it’s important that you’re aware of common choking hazards and that you are prepared (ie. take infant CPR and First Aid) just in case. But choking gets confused with gagging—which is completely different. Gagging is extremely common when babies are starting solids. The gag reflex keeps larger food pieces out of the wind pipe and near the front of the mouth, only allowing very well-chewed foods to the back to be swallowed. It’s a safety mechanism to prevent choking! And it happens A LOT if you choose the Baby Led Weaning route, especially in the beginning. It’s not a bad thing!

Here’s what you’ll find in this post:

The difference between gagging and choking
Why it’s important to let baby self-feed
Why it’s important to always watch your baby while they’re eating
Why it’s important to use a proper highchair
List of common choking hazards
Month-by-month list of appropriate foods (size, texture, shape)
Avoiding distractions at mealtimes
Why you should take infant First Aid and CPR
This is the number one choking hazard (and might surprise you!)

Yet I hear from many moms who want to try baby-led weaning, but are too terrified that their baby will choke on solid foods. Some good news recently came from a new study of 206 babies, called “A Baby-led Approach to Eating Solids & Risk of Choking.” The study compared a group of baby-led weaners (whose parents were given extra education on how to safely practice baby-led Weaning) to a “control” group.

The control group babies mostly started solids using the standard puree method. While the baby-led weaners did gag more at six months than spoon-fed babies, they gagged less by eight months of age. Because by this time, the baby-led weaners had gotten used to eating solids, and the pureed feeders were just starting! And there was no difference in the number of actual choking episodes reported between the two groups.

Gagging – why it’s nothing to be concerned about

Your baby will gag. A lot! Especially in those first few weeks of solid foods and if you’re letting your baby self-feed with finger foods. The best thing to do is to remain calm and cool and encourage your baby to work it out by staying positive, smiling, and NOT PANICKING. This is hard, but really important. If your baby sees you freak out, they might too, and it may possibly turn a normal experience into a scary one.

One common misconception is that gagging is the same thing as choking. Gagging is extremely common when babies are starting solids. In fact, as mentioned above, gagging is a safety mechanism to prevent choking when baby led weaning. Gagging doesn’t usually bother babies; but it does often bother parents! A potential benefit of introducing real foods sooner, is that the gag reflex is further forward in your baby’s mouth. This reflex moves farther back on your baby’s tongue as he ages.

In contrast to gagging, choking occurs when the air tube is blocked. If your baby bites off a perfectly round shaped piece of hard food, it is possible they will choke. But there’s a lot you can do to prevent it…

Here are my top eight tips to prevent choking when baby-led weaning:

1. Let your baby self-feed

If you put food into your baby’s mouth, it may immediately fall to the back of your baby’s throat, without having a chance to control it with their tongue and chew it. In the study quoted above, a total of three out of 206 babies choked to the degree they required emergency health care assistance. Of these three babies, two choked on milk and the third choked when food was placed in its mouth. Moral of the story? Never put a piece of food into your baby’s mouth.

Your baby might enjoy experimenting with a self-feeding spoon. It’s also going to be a messy learning experience, so you may want to stock up on bibs!

2. Watch your baby while they eat

While you can hear your baby gagging, you can’t hear them choking. Choking is often silent, which is why it’s so important that you sit down and eat with your baby. Don’t continue preparing food, do the dishes or go put a load of laundry in. I know that it’s tempting to multitask (I really do!), but when baby is learning how to eat, it’s important to be there to supervise and facilitate a positive and safe experience.

3. Use a proper high chair

It’s important to make sure that your baby is comfortable and secure in their highchair (I love this feeding highchair!). Their feet should ideally be resting on a firm surface and their legs should be bent at a 90 degree angle. This helps to make sure that baby is focusing more on eating and less on keeping their bodies upright and balanced (and prevents a very wiggle baby!). And unless there’s a risk of your baby falling or climbing out, I preferred not to buckle the high chair with my babies. That way you can get them out quickly, if needed. Make sure baby is sitting upright, and not in a reclining position.

4. Don’t offer food in choking-hazard size

Your baby’s air pipe is about the width of one of their finger nails, so it’s important to serve thinly sliced foods. Avoid round items like whole grapes, cherries, nuts, berries, cherry tomatoes and wieners. Instead, slice them in halves or quarters.

Things like big gobs of peanut butter, popcorn and stringy fruits and vegetables are also choking hazards. For harder fruits and veggies, I like to cut them in the shape of a potato chips: long enough for a beginner to grasp, but thin so that choking isn’t likely.

Here’s a full list of potential choking hazards:

Hard vegetables raw, such as cut baby carrots or raw beets
Firm fruit with and without peels
Chunks of firm meat or cheese
Fruits with pits or seeds (that haven’t been removed), like a whole plum or peach
Whole grapes
Popcorn
Marshmallows
Whole nuts
Fibrous and stringy foods like celery, pineapple, or asparagus
Hard candies, mints, or cough drops
Fish with bones
Snacks with toothpicks or skewers
Whole hotdogs or sausages

Alternative ways of serving:

Steam vegetables and fruit.
Peel and grate hard vegetables and fruit like carrots, parsnips, apples, and zucchini.
Grate cheese.
Always remove pits and seeds from fruit.
Slice grapes into lengthwise halves or quarters.
Thinly spread peanut butter or any other nut or seed butter on toast.
Debone fish.
Serve fresh, frozen, or canned (rinsed) corn instead of popcorn.

5. Offer appropriate size, texture and shape of food

Through the ages of 6 to 12 months, you can expand the textures and sizes of foods that are suitable to serve. As babies grow, they slowly develop more mature chewing and swallowing skills, as well as better finger dexterity and fine motor skills. This helps them handle firmer, smaller pieces of food. As you watch your baby eat, you will notice changes in the size of pieces that they can pick up.

In terms of texture, it’s important to steam fruits and veggies and test the foods to make sure you can mash them with your tongue on the roof of your mouth, especially in the beginning. It’s much easier to cough up a piece of soft food, than hard food!

Every baby develops at a slightly different rate, and that’s okay! While one baby might be ready to pick up small peas and blueberries by 9 months, another might not be ready until 11 months. These suggestions are just a loose guideline of which textures and sizes of food to offer at each age and stage. Of course, pay close attention to your own baby to know what’s right for them.

As your baby becomes a more confident feeder, move to the next stage. By the time they turn one, your baby will be self-feeding like a pro—you got this!

6 TO 7 MONTHS

Protein/iron-rich:

Meat and poultry: Minced; pureed; slow-cooked and shredded; or meatballs or patties
Low-mercury fish: Deboned, then soft-cooked or pureed fish
Eggs: Hard-boiled and mashed; omelets cut into strips; or scrambled
Legumes: Cooked and mashed or pureed beans, lentils and chickpeas. Silken or mashed firm tofu
Cheese: Thinly sliced or grated
Nut butter: thinly spread on toast strips; or stirred into infant cereal

Fruits and vegetables:

Soft fruits: Peeled and cut into large strips – try avocado or ripe pear.
Bananas: Leave half the peel on to help baby’s grip
Hard fruits and vegetables: peeled and steamed until soft, then mashed or pureed, or cut in large strips as finger food. Try green beans, carrots, zucchini or apples

Grains:

Whole grains: Cooked and spoon-fed quinoa or oats.
Whole grain bread: Toasted and cut into strips.
Iron-fortified infant cereals: Mashed with breastmilk or formula .

8 TO 9 MONTHS

Continue to serve any of the foods from 6-7 months, and progress to these textures when your baby seems ready:

Protein/iron-rich:

Meat, poultry and fish: Medium-sized, soft-cooked pieces.
Legumes: Lentil or bean patties (see my homemade lentil patties here).

Fruits and vegetables:

Soft fruits: Medium pieces of soft or steamed options such as raspberries , kiwi, or peach
Raw vegetables and fruits: peeled and grated apple or carrot

Grains:

Large-flake or steel-cut oats: Thicker than baby’s first iron-fortified baby cereals
Pasta: Bite-size cooked shapes, such as penne or macaroni
Firmer grains: Farro or barley

10 TO 12 MONTHS

Continue to serve the foods above, and progress to these textures when your baby seems ready. Now that baby has better dexterity, pieces can be smaller.

Protein/iron-rich:

Meat, poultry and fish: Smaller pieces of pulled roast chicken
Legumes: Cooked whole beans or lentils and cubed firm tofu.
Dairy: Cheese cubes.

Fruits and vegetables:

Hard vegetables: smaller pieces of raw peeled cucumber or steamed carrot coins
Dried fruit: Cut apricots or whole raisins.
Fruits: Raw small pieces, such as sliced grapes and small whole blueberries

Grains:

Pasta: Offer as part of mixed meals, such as ravioli, spaghetti and meatballs, or soup.

6. Don’t let your baby play with toys or watch TV during meals

Your baby needs to focus on learning the new skill of eating. And a distracted baby is more likely to choke! Remove all distractions, including toys and screens.

7. Take an infant CPR class

Chances are, your baby will be fine and not have a choking episode, especially if you’re following the tips above! Despite this, before anything else, this is priority number one. Make sure you take a baby first aid and CPR training course. Find one through your local hospital, public health center, or community center. It’s so important to be confident and knowledgeable about how to react in an emergency like choking way, you are confident in dealing with choking if it does happen.

8. Be careful with this one food, in particular

The #1 most common food that Baby-led Weaners choke on is full apples. I suggest serving apples peeled, sliced thinly and steamed for beginners. Once your baby is older, you can use a cheese grater to grate hard foods like apples. Here’s a great Flourless Oatmeal Apple Muffin recipe to try too!

I hope that these tips to prevent choking help you feel more confident in using Baby led Weaning!

Commonly Asked Questions About Choking and Baby-Led Weaning

How can I help a choking baby?

Prepare yourself by taking an infant CPR and first aid training course. Find one through your local hospital, public health center, or community center.

What are the benefits of baby-led weaning?

It’s important to know that there is no single “right way” to introduce solids to your baby, whether you want to start with traditional spoon-feeding or try baby-led weaning). There are many potential benefits to baby-led weaning, including improved dexterity, early oral-motor skill development, self-regulation, ease for parents, decreased picky eating and more.

What are the best baby-led weaning foods?

Safe finger foods include: pieces of soft-cooked vegetables and fruits; soft, ripe fruit such as banana; finely minced, ground or mashed cooked meat, deboned fish, and poultry; grated cheese; and whole grain toast strips with a thin layer of butter or nut butter. More baby-led weaning tips.

Food to Grow On

Food to Grow On is the definitive guide to childhood nutrition, packed with practical advice to support you through pregnancy, and up until your little one starts school.

Laid out in an easy-to-navigate question and answer style, this book provides practical advice and support from Sarah Remmer and Cara Rosenbloom, two trusted registered dietitians (and moms). Food to Grow On is packed with hard-earned parenting wisdom and the very latest research in pediatric nutrition, so you will feel supported, understood, and ready to help your child thrive.

Buy Food to Grow On!

Did you know that we offer personalized nutrition counselling for kids and families? If this is something you’d like to learn more about, please visit The Centre for Family Nutrition.

*This is a guest post was originally written by guest dietitian and writer Jennifer House, RD and then revised by Sarah Remmer, RD

How to properly introduce complementary foods to a child? 6 questions for parents Our child.

Introducing complementary foods: advice from a renowned pediatrician

Contents:

Was your baby born prematurely?
How long have you been trying to get your child to feed?
What do you feed your baby?
Does your child push a spoon?
Does your child often choke on food?
Does your child vomit after eating, have a rash, diarrhea, or persistent loose stools? If so, what complementary foods did you give him and how often?

At six months, most babies are ready to switch to solid foods. Although some start earlier, others later, six months is the best time. The process will take several months, but gradually your child will develop the habit of eating solid foods three times a day. By eight or nine months, you will have accustomed him to several types of food - cereals, fruits and vegetables, chicken, fish - and your baby will already be on the way to successfully eating solid foods.

During this period, I receive phone calls from puzzled parents with a whole list of questions. As the mother of one seven-month-old baby observed: “There are so many breastfeeding specialists around, but my friends and I are now in need of a complementary feeding consultant.”

I am ready to become such a consultant. Here are the questions I usually ask parents of toddlers. The answers to them will help you figure out how best to start and what probably needs to be changed.

Was your baby born prematurely?

If this is the case, then even at six months it is premature to introduce solid foods. Do not forget that his chronological age, counted from the day he was born, is not the same as functional age, which is determined by the degree of physical development. For example, if a child was born two months prematurely, then when he turns six months according to the calendar, he will actually be only four according to development. Return to a liquid diet, and at the age of seven and a half or eight months, try again.

How long have you been trying to get your baby used to feeding?

Maybe the problem is not the baby? Maybe you just have high expectations? Eating solid foods is not the same as sucking milk from a breast or bottle. Imagine what it’s like to suddenly feel some kind of viscous mass in your mouth after just one liquid. Some babies take two or three months to get used to the idea of this sticky food. You can't go anywhere, you have to take the situation calmly.

What do you feed your baby?

Weaning is a gradual process of moving from liquid food to finger food. I recommend starting with fruit. Pears are well digested. Some experts advise starting with grains, but I prefer fruits because of their nutritional value. You should start with one teaspoon and you can try several times.

This process is very slow and gradual. When you start weaning, for the first two weeks you only give one or two teaspoons of pear for breakfast and dinner while continuing to breastfeed or bottle feed your baby.

If the child does not react negatively, you can introduce a second type of food, such as pumpkin, giving a new food for breakfast and moving the pear food for lunch. Try offering your baby a new fruit or vegetable (like an apple) in the third week in the morning. From now on, he will eat three types of complementary foods.

By the beginning of the fourth week, you can introduce oatmeal and give the child his own lunch, increasing the amount to three or four teaspoons at a time, which to some extent depends on the weight of the baby and the amount of food he eats. For the next four weeks, offer him rice or barley, peaches, bananas, carrots, peas, green beans, and plums.

You can buy ready-made baby food or make your own. When you're preparing potatoes or vegetables for the whole family, mash some into a baby puree. Don't mix different foods. Don't forget that you are trying to help your child develop the taste buds of the tongue. How can he know what he likes if everything is mixed up?

This does not mean that you are not allowed to add some apple juice to your porridge to make it more palatable. However, I have seen how mothers grind chicken, rice and vegetables prepared for the whole family in a blender for the baby. And they gave such a combined dish to the baby every day. But this is a human child, not a dog!

The porridge and puree feeding period will last only a few months. Nothing bad will happen to the baby if he eats from jars. In addition, even very large companies are now making organic products for children with fewer additives. You just have to read the labels.

If you are one of those parents who is worried about whether their baby is eating enough, set aside one week to follow up on this. But how do you know what, in terms of nutritional value, are four tablespoons of apple juice and the same amount of oatmeal? You need to count grams. If you cook food for your baby yourself, you can freeze it in the form of cubes in an ice mold to make it easier to measure - one cube is equal to 25-30 grams.

Conversion of complementary foods to grams
1 ice cube = 25-30 grams
3 teaspoons = 1 tablespoon = about 15 grams
2 tablespoons = 25-30 grams

With baby food that you buy in the store, there will be no problems either. If the child ate a full jar, then just look at the label to find out how much was there. If the baby mastered only half or a quarter of the jar, recalculate this volume in grams.

A balanced diet of fruits, vegetables, dairy products, proteins and whole grains is very important for a child. Do not forget that the capacity of children's stomachs is still very small. Depending on weight and appetite, the baby may eat more or less.

Does your child push the spoon?

When you teach him to use a spoon, try to put food in his mouth on the inside of his lip. Do not stick the spoon far so that the baby does not choke. One or two such cases are enough, and this object will begin to evoke associations in the child with an unpleasant situation for him. If you do not believe, then ask someone to feed you in the same way!

Well, if your baby has no problems using a spoon, then it won't be long before he tries to snatch it from your hands. Let him take. But don't expect him to use it for its intended purpose. Such a game allows him to prepare for an independent meal.

Of course, this can piss you off because the baby will want the spoon in his hand all the time. For this reason, I always advise parents to have a whole arsenal of spoons ready. You feed the baby with one, he swings the other, and the third lies in reserve. Do not forget also that he will definitely drop a few spoons.

Does your child often choke on food?

If you are just starting to introduce complementary foods, this may be because you put the spoon in too far, put too much food on it, or feed too quickly, preventing the baby from swallowing what was given to him before. Another reason for this situation may be insufficiently well-mashed food.

Some babies, especially those with sensitive temperaments, take longer to get used to the new sensations of complementary foods, and their parents need to be patient. If the baby is choking on food and does not like the first taste sensations, stop giving complementary foods. Try again later in a few days. Experiment, but never force the baby.

However, even if your child has passed this stage and you have started to feed him food that is eaten with your hands, he may continue to choke on food from time to time, especially unfamiliar. There will be a minimum of such cases if you do not introduce dishes that are eaten with your hands too early and carefully choose what to feed the child.

Does your child vomit after eating, have a rash, diarrhea, or persistent loose stools? If so, what complementary foods did you give him and how often?

Babies have adverse reactions to certain foods, even allergies. And although the connection between complementary foods and poor health is not always the case, an unhealthy baby is unlikely to be eager to learn new things.

That's why I always tell parents that if you decide to introduce complementary foods, you need to take your time. I always suggest trying new foods in the morning, because if there is any problem, it will be the least disturbing nightly sleep for the baby and yours. With the separate introduction of products, it is easier to determine the cause of the baby's malaise.

Of course, if your family has a tendency to allergies, you should be especially vigilant, because the baby may have an allergic reaction. The number of such cases has increased significantly over the past twenty years. Industrially produced food given to children does not improve the situation, but only gets worse. So keep a journal of what you gave and when. If adverse reactions in the baby occur frequently and in severe form, then you will have to contact a pediatrician.

Child chokes on food | Mamovediya

Although the reluctance to swallow solid food is a natural response in many situations, not just those involving food, infants and young children should not constantly choke.

If your child is constantly choking, or his face starts to turn red, or the skin around his lips turns blue, take your child to the doctor. In rare cases, this may indicate a problem requiring medical attention.

Although your father may be alarmed that you choke on the first spoonful of solid food, this happens quite often when the child starts eating. You have to learn to eat solid food.

In the sucking reflex, babies move their tongue to the front of their mouth and then up to the palate. They make 10 to 20 sucking movements, and then a big gulp follows. With solid food, however, the tongue must almost reverse, sending the food to the back of the mouth.

Learning to swallow solid food is not easy for a baby. And during the learning process, he may choke if food is directed to his windpipe instead of his stomach.

You can, however, make eating a much easier exercise when the baby does not choke. To do this, you need to master new feeding techniques.

Here are some expert tips.

Wait until the child sits up. If your child is constantly choking on food while eating, it is possible that he has not yet reached the stage of development at which he is ready for this. Your baby must be at least four or five months old before you start solid food.

What is the advice? Give the child solid food when he has already learned to sit more or less confidently. When your child eats while seated, gravity will help guide the food from the mouth into the esophagus.

Start with liquid food . When your baby is really hungry, breastfeed or give him a bottle first to satisfy his appetite a little. If your child is not so desperately hungry, he will be able to handle the difficult task of swallowing solid food more easily.

Eat rice. Rice grains are an ideal first food for children because children are rarely allergic to rice and can be thinned by mixing with plenty of milk.

Your baby will have less difficulty eating porridge if the consistency is more like liquids he is used to swallowing. Once your baby has learned to swallow rice porridge, you can gradually move on to thicker, coarser foods.

Let the first feedings be small . The first solid food feedings are for practice, not for real nutrition. An infant who is learning to eat only needs a few tablespoons of solid food a day to practice eating. The main nutrition should come from breast milk or artificial bottle feeding.