When babies are between four to six months old, they should be introduced to solid food, as per the recommendation of The American Academy of Pediatrics. When the baby is ready to consume something else than just the bottled milk then you should hand them a solid food like banana or a soft asparagus spear, instead of giving them the usual cereals or purees.
A lot of parents think that it is not safe to give their babies a solid food. But according to CNN, a new study has discovered that the usual and the traditional spoon feeding have caused more choking than baby-led weaning.
To avoid the choking, parents should not give extremely soft and mashed food to their child because what they do is they form a crumb in their mouth, which can cause choking. Infants take time to learn how to eat. Since they're used to liquid intake of nutrients mostly through milk, a transition to partially solid food becomes a bit difficult to cope with at first.
To make sure that a child does not choke while eating, the parent has to be sure that the child is sitting straight and isn't left alone when having food. It is important to be there when they eat but all the eating and control should be under the infant.
According to CBC News, gagging is common when infants eat as they usually do spit some food out and all but choking is not. Choking is very serious and it can cause harm to the child as it happens when the airways are blocked.
It may be a bit difficult to understand the difference between gagging and choking for the people who have become parents recently but when infants are six to eight months old, they gagged at least once. So yes, it is healthy and important for the baby to have solid food instead of having cereals.
