Katie Ferraro (1s):

When your baby's gagging, it's going to be audible. Okay. So during or in-between gagging that baby's still sputters or makes noises turns red or pink. It's a good thing actually, then that noise means there's air passing through. Okay. Hey there I'm Katie Ferraro Registered Dietitian college nutrition, professor and mom of seven specializing in baby-led weaning here on the Baby-Led Weaning Made Easy Podcast. I help you strip out all of the noise and nonsense about feeding, leaving you with the competence and knowledge. You need to give your baby a safe start to solid foods using baby Led Weaning. Hey guys, welcome back today.

Katie Ferraro (41s):

We're doing an episode about gagging and in particular, What do I do if My Baby Gags on Food? Now I know for a lot of you, you're just getting started with solid foods. Gagging can be a major barrier. A lot of parents are like, oh, it freaks me out so much but if you walk away with nothing else from today's episode, I want you to know that gagging is a good thing. It's a natural and necessary part of learning how to eat. So we've got to get okay with our babies gagging. So I'm going to be teaching you a little bit about the difference between gagging and choking. Why do baby's gag? How is gagging actually going to help your baby progress, their solid foods?

Katie Ferraro (1m 22s):

And then what do we not do? And then what do we do when our babies gag on food? I know it's uncomfortable to watch your baby gag and it's uncomfortable for your baby to experience, but it's an inevitable part of learning how to eat. So there's a mantra you've got to commit to memory. It's Gagging is a good thing. It's an important component of this whole learning, how to eat process. And please know that your baby, who is six months of age, plus showing the other reliable signs of readiness to feed that baby can recover from a gag on his or her own. We don't intervene during a gag. That can be hard sometimes, especially if you're like me, a little bit of a control freak, because if you lunge at the baby or you frightened or startle the baby, when they're gagging, that can cause the food that the baby's eating to be sucked into their airway and turning what was once a harmless gag into a dangerous, harmful choke.

Katie Ferraro (2m 10s):

So the first thing to remember is that we need to trust the process. If you want to get over your fear of gagging, you need to understand that babies can recover from gags on their own, your baby, who's six months of age and showing those other reliable signs of readiness to feed they don't need you to intervene during a gag. They got this. Now here's the deal with gagging when your baby's gagging, it's going to be audible. Okay? So during or in between gagging that baby still sputters or makes noises turns red or pink, it's a good thing. Actually, that noise means there's air passing through, okay? The baby's making noise, excessive gagging, just heads up, it can lead to vomiting. So a little bit of vomiting is to be expected when you start solid foods. But if your baby's vomiting every meal or multiple times in a week, that's definitely not typical.

Katie Ferraro (2m 52s):

However, early on some babies, especially with the super sensitive gag reflux, we got to allow a little bit of time in between the end, a milk feed and the beginning of a solid food feed cause if your baby's coming to the table with a belly full of milk, even a mild gag, certainly a more involved gag, that's going to result in your baby vomiting, the stomach contents and we don't want that happening unnecessarily because it can lead to negative associations with food and feeding. So if you guys are following me on Instagram, I recently was documenting this baby Sienna. And we were showing her first 10 days of Baby-Led Weaning. And she was like the most gagging baby I've ever seen in my life. She has been like gagging and vomiting from her own pacifier. Even up until six months of age, third day, we're doing buckwheat and she just vomited all over the table.

Katie Ferraro (3m 32s):

And the mom's like, that's not a big deal. She does it pretty frequently. But then the rest of the days she gagged, but she, she didn't vomit. So again, a little bit of vomiting is typical, but not all the time. So the more practice your baby has eating different foods and new textures, the more quickly your baby's going to move out of that frequent gagging that occurs when all of the eating stuff is brand new. Okay. So why about nine months of age? We see the gagging. If you started at six months of age, it really starts to dip, but please know that babies can still gag. Especially certain foods can be more challenging for babies even as they get closer to one year of age and even beyond that. Okay? So I don't want you to think your baby is not ready to start solid foods just because they're gagging. Some people mistake that when the baby's moving the food around their mouth and pushing it out to say, oh, that's the extrusion reflex or the tongue thrust reflex.

Katie Ferraro (4m 16s):

And that's not what's happening when your baby is gagging on food. That's part of the process of learning how to eat. It's not an indicator that they're not ready to eat, my friend and feeding colleague who's been on the podcast, a ton, Dawn Winklemann, she's a speech language pathologist, and she specializes in pediatric swelling. She uses this marathon analogy and I love it. So it's basically like if you want to run a marathon in November, you don't start practicing in November and wake up and run 26.2 miles, right? You start six months prior to that, sometime in May. And then you work yourself up to those 26.2 miles. So same thing goes with gagging. The more practice you put in early for your baby with a variety of foods and textures, the more ready your baby will be to become an independent eater. As you get closer to that, one-year mark.

Katie Ferraro (4m 57s):

So how do we react to a gag? All right. First of all, you don't do anything right? Dawn uses this great analogy. She loves dogs. I don't dislike animals. I just don't like them. And I don't know how to behave around them. People don't like, when you say you don't like animals. So I always say I'm scared of them, which I am. And Dawn's approaches just like Katie used the language with your baby that you use when you're pushing your baby out in the stroller. And someone in the neighborhood is walking their dog and you're kind of freaked out and really cute. So, okay baby, it's just a dog. You got this, even though you're freaking out on the inside. Same thing when your baby is gagging. Okay, baby. It's just a gag work through this. You got this. So when your baby gags don't do anything, it takes practice.

Katie Ferraro (5m 38s):

Don't lunge. Don't freak out. Don't rip the food out of your baby's mouth. That increases choking risks. Instead, stay calm. Easier said than done. I know, but allow your baby time to self-correct you settle down. You smile. You get that fake smile. Fake baby voice on it. Say positive praises. Come on, baby, you got this, cough it out. All right, I've got another analogy for you guys. If these are working for you, if you like marathons, use the marathon. One, if you like dogs, use the dog. One. Think about gagging. As it pertains to learning to eat, like similar to falling down is when your baby is learning how to walk, right? Some of you aren't there yet, but like when your baby is learning to walk, it is not pretty. There's bumping into stuff and there's falling and bruises and tears, but we don't jump in and forbidden our babies to learn how to walk.

Katie Ferraro (6m 18s):

Just because there's a few necessary bumps along the way, right? The same exact thing goes for eating and gagging. You don't stop your baby's progress from learning how to eat. Just because that one part of the experience gagging has you freaking out gagging is remarkably different from choking. Okay? So what is choking? Choking totally different. It's not red or pink and sputtering and noise. Baby's turning blue or purple and choking is silent. There's no noise and say baby turns blue. I remember they taught us this in the NICU with our premature quadruplets. Blue is bad. Okay. With gagging there's noise, right? Because there's air passing through your baby's gasping and sputtering air going in and out. That's a good thing. Baby turns red or pink with a gag and they can work through it on their own. But with choking, no noise, baby will turn blue.

Katie Ferraro (6m 60s):

Sometimes with a choke, there can be like soft intermittent noise, but for the most part, it's silent. So another reason why we never leave baby unattended when eating playing is because a choke is going to be silent. You won't hear it happening, especially if you're in another room or not directly observing your baby. When it comes to choking. I need you to know that the research shows that there is no higher risk of choking when you start solids with the baby led approach compared to traditional spoon-feeding. But that's only provided that parents are educated about reducing choking risk. And so, even though there's no higher risk, it still is important to have basic CPR skills and know what to do in the event that your baby does have a choking incident. So I always recommend parents take an infant refresher CPR course before they start solid foods.

Katie Ferraro (7m 42s):

I know you did CPR six months ago before your baby was born. But like, I don't know about you. I can't even remember what I had for breakfast yesterday. Let alone the particulars of the class. I took six months ago. So there are a lot of online options out there. Great options for learning basic CPR skills. Some of them even have certification. If you need that for work. The one I take each quarter as a student also has certification. I'm a student for them, but I also am an affiliate. And so if you want to get online CPR, I have a discount code for an already really affordable course to get $10 off. So if you go to bit.ly/onlinecprcourse, my code is Katie 10, and you can get hooked up for your online CPR stuff and get it all taken care of, including anybody who watches your baby.

Katie Ferraro (8m 25s):

I'm a firm believer that anyone who helps you with your baby and helps feed your baby should also have basic CPR skills because CPR saves lives. Again, that's bit.ly/onlinecprcourse. And the code Katie 10 will get you $10 off of that. All right? So we went through what you don't do in a gap, right? You don't lunge at the baby. You don't slap the baby on the back. You don't intervene because your baby can work through that gag on their own. What can you do if you're freaked out about gagging? Well, one thing you can do is watch videos of other babies, gagging on food and recovering on their own. So one of the things I'm known for on Instagram is a weekly series of gagging videos. So parents from all over the world send me these really random videos of their babies gagging. I love it when I was just starting out my Instagram account about six years ago for baby led weaning, I used to just post the gagging videos and parents were like, this is traumatizing.

Katie Ferraro (9m 11s):

I don't want to be scrolling and see babies gagging. So I start the post with the cover that says Be Aware Gagging Video, but they're always carousels. So if you slide or swipe, you can see the baby's gagging on foods and then recovering and going right back to eating on their own. And it's a weird thing to watch, but watching those videos can give you confidence in your baby's ability to gag on food recover. And the best part is when they go right back to eating that food. So if you're on Instagram, I'm at baby led wean team. If you search the #gusandhannahgag, H a N N a H. Those my twins, Gus and Hannah, my sixth and seventh babies were spun off this Baby-Led Weaning Instagram account to document their a hundred FIRST FOODS.

Katie Ferraro (9m 52s):

So I created the a hundred FIRST FOODS approach to baby led weaning back in 2016 when I was doing baby led weaning with my quadruplets a year and a half later, when we had twins, I did the whole hundred FIRST FOODS program again, but really refined it and worked it into a formalized program that now tens of thousands of families around the world have done. So at the time Gus and Hannah were hot on my Instagram. So Gusandhannahgag is what we just started as a hashtag for all the gagging videos. If you want to check them out, another thing you can do, if you're freaked out about gagging and choking is to seek further education about how to reduce choking and to learn more about the difference between gagging and choking. So I co-teach an online program. It's a choking prevention and response course. I co-teach this with Dawn Winkelmamn, the speech language pathologist.

Katie Ferraro (10m 34s):

Who's also specializing in baby led weaning that I was telling you guys about earlier. Me and Dawn and Brandon, who is a certified CPR instructor who owns Thrive Training Institute, which is the online CPR course I was telling you guys about. Dawn, Brandon and I, we designed to co-teach this course. So Dawn teaches the whole part about how your baby learns, how to swallow and what Gagging is. And she's got her fake mouth out there with her fake neck. She shows you how a green bean can get lodged in the wrong place. She does her whole SLP thing about the mechanics of how babies learn to chew and swallow, which is so important to me, learning that from a speech language pathologist. And then I covered the part about foods because food preparation is so important in reducing choking risk.

Katie Ferraro (11m 16s):

So I'm teaching you a little bit about the different types of foods that we offer and why they reduce choking risk. I also teach a whole module in this course about the difference between allergic reactions and choking, because a lot of times parents mistake those and then Brandon teaches the whole CPR component. So it's a choking prevention and response course, and this is a relatively new program that we just put together. If you go to bit dot Lee slash choking course, you can find the link to that program. The code KATIE10 is an affiliate code for an additional $10 off. I think it's an incredible value for comprehensive education about Gagging and choking, what to do to prevent it, and then what to do if it happens. And Brandon kind of freaked me out with his whole part of the program, because he really talks about a lot of the other household items that are choking hazards.

Katie Ferraro (12m 1s):

I was like, oh my gosh, I had no idea. Kind of went through and like tried to re baby-proof my house to prevent against choking from a lot of things I learned from that aspect of the course. So again, that is a choking prevention and response course, and I will just put the links up to all the courses and stuff. If you guys want to learn more at the show notes for this episode, if you go to BLW podcast.com/221, you can grab all of this information and also put some visuals up there that just some snippets from the course, just so you can kind of get an idea of what it's like if you do need, or do want additional training about Gagging and how to prevent choking. So head to BLWpodcast.com/221 Thank you guys so much for being here.

Katie Ferraro (12m 43s):

And if you have any good gagging videos that have to be on Instagram about baby led weaning team, if you DM me, send the video first and then put gag somewhere in the DM, if you can, because then that pops up and we can see that other than the Gagging video that someone's trying to send us. So I would love to share your baby's gagging because honestly, again, seeing really is believing in a lot of parents. They tell me all the time, they gain so much confidence by watching videos of other babies, Gagging and recovering on their own. And I want you to be confident in your baby's ability to do this, but I need you also to know that none of this matters if your baby is not six months of age, if your baby is not six months of age yet, please do not feed anything except breast milk or formula babies who are six months of age or beyond or six months adjusted if born premature. And if they're showing the other reliable signs of readiness to feed those babies can recover from a gag on their own.

Katie Ferraro (13m 29s):

And it is important to know too, if you're scared about progressing beyond purees, and you're worried about finger foods, please know that there's important research that shows that babies who practice the least frequently with finger foods are at the higher risk of choking. So even though you might be scared to move beyond purees, it's important that you do that because you're giving your baby the opportunity to practice and intern lowering their choking risk. Thanks again for listening. I'll see you guys next time.