G'day guys today's video: Tips on how to get your baby day finger food is a
viewers request. I had a question in my video what my baby eats in a day as a
seven-month-old for some tips on how to get their baby to eat finger food. So I
thought I'd share with you some things that we've done that's helped Sophie to eat
finger food. She's now 10 months old and eats what we
eat except for salads I don't find salads have enough substance so she
doesn't eat salads when we're having salad for dinner.
So first off eat with your child so the old saying monkey-see and monkey-do. For
meal times we sit down and we all try to eat together so for us we actually eat
at 5:30 when Sophie eat and before Sophie was weaning we sat her at the
table in the bumbo so that she was part of the experience of mealtimes even
though she wasn't yet eating food so that really helped her to get interested.
The second one is have your baby in their high chair for meal so it's easy
sometimes to put them on your lap and just spoon in the food but by them
having their own seat in the highchair it just creates independence with eating.
My next tip is finger food first so like I said we actually eat at 5:30, so I
found that if I gave Sophie some finger food at about quarter past five when she
wasn't super hungry then she was more likely to try the finger food. Once she's
really hungry I found early on when we were getting
into the finger food she just wouldn't eat it she just wanted the puree she
wanted food in her tummy. So I suggest giving finger food first and giving it a
bit earlier than your normal mealtime another option if they're not showing
interest in their food is to give food from your plate so
Sophie has her own plate and she'll be eating the same food that we're eating
so for instance fried rice but if it comes from our plate she's more likely
to eat it so in the short term we've found this as a good solution for her to
eat finger food. So the next tip is to have some soft food that can easily be
gripped I've actually done a video on Sophie's kind of first finger foods I'll
link that in the description below. So they don't just give you some ideas of
some finger food so apple pieces as well as penne pasta which she really enjoyed.
The next tip is quite similar and it's about how you present your food so for
instance we found if you kind of do a carrot stick with foods
we did sweet potato where we just slice it and then cut it in half and it just
didn't work it was too hard for Sophie to grip onto so we found if we kind of
did it like a carrot stick she could grab onto one end and eat with the other
end. You don't want it to be too small that's your choke and speaking of
choking and gagging they're two different things so gagging is a natural
body reflex so for Sophie if she puts too much food in her mouth she will gag
and then all come out again. Even with gagging though sometimes she'll get red
and she'll cough but the airway isn't blocked whereas choking is a
life-threatening condition because something is blocking the airway and you
need to provide first aid. When you're giving them finger food it's important
that you're with your baby and you're sitting there and you're observing them
The next tip is demonstrating how to pick up food so first off we put the
food on the tray and then we used our hand to take it to her mouth. And then
once she was taking it that way we then demonstrated with her hand how
to pick it up and do it and then the next step is she does it by herself. Now
for some babies they will go straight to just picking it up by themselves but if
not you need to demonstrate how to do it especially for different food that's
different shapes some slimy some squishy we found it helpful to demonstrate with
Sophie how you'd pick it up. Leading on with this we found one bit of food at a
time now I know this is different to baby led weaning where they kind of
talked about putting it all out and letting your baby choose. With Sophie we
didn't find that worked if we had a variety of options of food in front of
her she would sort it. So she would and then chuck it over the side and she kept
doing that. So what we found best for us is to just put one at a time and she
eats it and once she swallowed it then we give her the next piece of food. So
that's also a difference between puree and finger foods for your babies, so when
they're having purees they're just swallowing whereas when you're having
finger food you need to chew first. and then swallow. When you're trying to get
your baby to have finger food do it at the meal that they are less tired so for
instance if your baby's most awake at lunchtime that's the time to really work
on having finger food. If by the end of the day they're too tired then not
gonna be interested they just want food in their tummy so they can go to bed. So
choose the meal that they are most awake and ready to learn. And the last tip for
you is offer water regularly especially when you're giving them bread and cheese
so in the mornings when Sophie is having her toast we have water there and she sips
it throughout. Thanks for watching guys I'm a first-time mum these tips have
helped us. If you've got some other tips to share please let us know in the
comments below I know personally when I'm watching other YouTube's I like to
scroll through the comments and see what other tips people are providing. So
please share in the comments below. I'll see you next time. Take care! Bye!