Best Way to Introduce Finger Foods to Your Baby

At around six or seven months old, your baby’s developmental progress means that mealtimes are becoming a very different affair. Now she can sit up unaided, you’ll need to invest in a highchair. She’ll enjoy watching you get her food ready, but if she can’t wait try keeping her busy with a selection of toys on her tray attachment.

Learning to chew

You need to start introducing your baby to lumpier foods if you want her to develop chewing skills, but don’t imagine she can cope with a steak just because her first teeth have appeared! She’ll still use her gums to chew for a while yet and needs her food lightly mashed until she is around one year old – although softer food such as bread or pasta can be left whole if you wish.

Some babies don’t take kindly to finding lumps in their previously pureed food, and may react by spitting them out. If your baby does this, don’t rush her: learning how to chew is quite a difficult exercise, especially as she has only known how to suck until now. Instead, offer her finger foods as soon as she can hold them, to help her practise chewing and explore new textures.

Introducing finger foods

By seven months, your baby will probably be eager to start finger foods. Her hand-eye coordination has improved to such an extent that she can now pick up a piece of food and put it to her mouth, albeit none too tidily For now she’ll hold the food in her fist and work hard to push the last messy mouthful in with the flat of her hand. By nine months, however, she has better control of her thumb and forefinger, and with this pincer grip she can pick up tiny pieces of food such as raisins or peas.

First finger foods for your baby are those that can be gummed to a soft consistency for swallowing or that will dissolve in the mouth without chewing. Always cut food into manageable chunks and don’t offer too much at a time: she’ll either try to stuff it in all at once or sweep the lot onto the floor. Foods to try include:

•    bread, rice cakes, toast
•    tiny cubes of hard cheese
•    chunks of soil fruit such as banana, peach, or melon
•    small pieces of cooked carrot, broccoli and cauliflower (cut the stalks off), sweet potato
•    well-cooked pasta – cut up as necessary
•    scrambled egg.

Once your baby’s front molars appear – from about 10 months onwards – you can offer her harder, firmer food such as pieces of apple or small pieces of chicken. And remember always to stay with your baby when she’s eating, in case of choking.