Mucky pup. Photograph: Bonnie Vculeka/APA few weekends ago, my friend Sophie told me a horrible story about a young toddler who picked a grape off her older sibling's plate and within seconds it was stuck in her windpipe. The child survived but was left with permanent brain damage.
A quick Google search shows another, even sadder, incident. In fact googling "toddler" and "chokes" is a pretty terrifying experience.
Before having my own baby, I would have felt shock and sadness at these stories. After, it's more like a wave of physical nausea, followed by the (completely irrational) decision that we'll never have grapes in the house again.
My eight month old started solids three months ago. At first it was only excitement and delight feeding him single purees of sweet potato, butternut squash and pears. But now we're at the stage where I should be introducing new textures and finger foods, and the stories haunt me at each meal. I know I sound neurotic, but apparently I'm not alone. A quick survey of all my friends who are mothers found that choking is one of their biggest fears.
To me the whole finger food area is quite vague. How lumpy should the food be? When do you give a baby toast fingers? Are they really ready for a raisins and cubes of cheese before one? Some books recommend slices of apple for eight month olds, but they seem too hard and crunchy for my toothless little boy. I know experienced mums have their six month olds sucking and squelching their way through all sorts of finger foods, but I'm a bit more hesitant about the whole thing. I feel safe with rusks, but an apple slice... is that not a bit risky?
The advice I've been given to ease my fears is to relax and be confident of his reflexes. Babies have a much stronger gag reflex than adults and spit up food that's not going down the right way. Also it's important to let your baby go at his own pace, offering him new finger foods every few days to try and see how he gets on. Some are much quicker to master the art of eating a rice cake than others. Good first finger foods to try are rusks, softly cooked fruits (with no skin) and vegetables, or buttered toast. And of course it's important to never to leave them alone when they are eating.
My blender is not on full beam any more and the meals are slowly getting lumpier. I've even thrown in a bit of pasta into his food - and although there is some occasional gagging, I now know that can be a normal reaction to new textures. Round foods that might lodge in the windpipe are still banned from my kitchen - grapes and cherry tomatoes being the biggest culprits of child-choking incidents - but hopefully after the first aid course I'm booked in to attend, I'll return to my senses.
Hilary Graves is the co-founder of Little Dish. For more information please visit www.littledish.co.uk
