what are some good finger foods to feed an 8 month old?

Question

i know im supposto start giving my baby finger foods.. and i dont know what to give him! ive heard that i should give him cheerios, but it seems to me like hes too young and would choke on those...i guess im just scared to give him hard stuff. i give him those special baby biscuits that are hard
but get mushy and hes fine on those. i also give him pancakes, macaroni and cheese, noodles... i just have no idea what else to give him! i do feed him baby food during the day, but i know he needs to tach himself how to eat, so please help! any advice will help me out. thanks!

Answer 1

They have those Graduates Puffs that melt in the kids mouths. We give our 8 month old those, and he loves them. Much harder to choke on than something like a Cheerio since they melt in the mouth. We also give him Biter Biscuits, which he also loves, and it takes him a good while to get to the end of one of those (but they are kinda messy). Just look in the baby food aisle, they have these things right there next to the jars of food.

Answer 2

I agree with the previous answers, they gum the food and if they aren't ready to swallow it they spit it out. I just tried to blend nectarines with a handheld food processor (what a challenge) and it came out a tiny bit chunky. I wasn't sure how my daughter was going to react and that is exactly what she did. She gummed it and some of it went down some of it was spit out like raspberries. I have a little more confidence now trying the other foods becasue I know that she will spit out what she isn't comfortable swallowing. The choking hazards you have to be extremely carfeul about are things that can lodged in the throat or an excess amount of food going in at once. Most of the foods listed here may make your baby gag a little but they will go down or come out. As long as you are watching, you will know how much went in and intervene if a big chunk comes off.

Answer 3

You can give him some well-cooked vegetables (cut up)
Cut up pieces of toast
Rise cakes
Cheerios are safe for an eight month old to eat, my eight and a half month old loves them. They chew on them so long that the cheerio turns mushy in their mouth. You can buy "Nutrios" made specially for babies.

Answer 4

Buy Gerber soft finger foods, such as carrots, green beans , corn and turkey and chicken , it comes in the Gerber baby food but they are solid so that he may grasp them and eat them himself. They also have the the toddler cereal in a finger food, which is not as hard as the cheerios.

Answer 5

He can eat everything you eat except honey and certain allergens as decided by you.

My son has been eating nothing but table food since he started solids. He is almost a year and he has never choked on food. (grass, twigs, plastic, etc -yes).

His first food was pears, then apples. There is nothing wrong with hard foods, babies chew with their gums.

http://www.borstvoeding.com/voedselintroductie/vast_voedsel/rapley_guidelines.html
Won't he choke?
Many parents worry about babies choking. However, there is good reason to believe that babies are at less risk of choking if they are in control of what goes into their mouth than if they are spoon fed. This is because babies are not capable of intentionally moving food to the back of their throats until after they have learnt to chew. And they do not develop the ability to chew until after they have developed the ability to reach out and grab things. Thus, a very young baby cannot easily put himself at risk because he cannot get the food into his mouth in the first place. On the other hand, the action used to suck food off a spoon tends to take the food straight to the back of the mouth, causing gagging. This means that spoon feeding has its own potential to lead to choking – and makes the giving of lumpy foods with a spoon especially dangerous.

It appears that a baby's general development keeps pace with the development of his ability to manage food in his mouth, and to digest it. A baby who is struggling to get food into his mouth is probably not quite ready to eat it. It is important to resist the temptation to 'help' the baby in these circumstances since his own developmental abilities are what ensure that the transition to solid feeding takes place at the right pace for him. This process is also what keeps him safe from choking on small pieces of food, since, if he is not yet able to pick up small objects using his finger and thumb, he will not be able to get, for example, a pea or a raisin into his mouth. Once he is able to do this, he will have developed the necessary oral skills to deal with it. Putting foods into a baby's mouth for him overrides this natural protection and increases the risk of choking.

Tipping a baby backwards or lying him down to feed him solid foods is dangerous. A baby who is handling food should always be supported in an upright position. In this way, food which he is not yet able to swallow, or does not wish to swallow, will fall forward out of his mouth, not backwards into his throat.

Adopting a baby-led approach doesn't mean abandoning all the common sense rules of safety. While it is very unlikely that a young baby would succeed in picking up a peanut, for example, accidents can and will happen on rare occasions – however the baby is fed. Rules of safety which apply in other play situations should therefore be adhered to when eating is in progress.

Answer 6

cheerios are an awesome first finger food becasue the soften up very easily and are small enough that the baby wont choke..

Answer 7

My daughter loves frozen blueberries. I dethaw them a little and then smush then indivdiually so she can easily pick them up (you don't have to do that though) and these are a very healthy snack and good way for babies to get their 5 fruits and vegetables a day.

Answer 8

Anything you can cut up into hand sized pieces. As you said pancakes. they are great, rip them apart and let the baby go crazy on them. Veggies like green beans work well also.

Answer 9

We give our 9 month old zwieback toast, biter biskits, arrowroot cookies and low sodium Ritz crackers. I'm still not too sure about giving him noodles..

Answer 10

Gerber fruit puffs are great to start the little one of with.
Kix cereal is great to and a lot cheaper than the Gerber fruit puffs.