Have you moved onto lumpier/ finger foods?

Hi moms with 9-mth olds, how many teeth does your LO has? Have you stopped pureeing his meals? My baby only has 2 botton teeth and am wondering if & when I should start making his meals more lumpy. The thought of him gumming an entire 8-oz meal of veg & meat worries me a bit. Would love to hear how you are progressing.

Hi mumbloxy, my son is one year old but only has 3 teeth. He had his first teeth at 10 months. But even though he has so few teeth, he is still able to gum on lumpy food without problem. We haven't been pureeing his food for quite some time (in fact he never likes food without texture even during the stage he had no teeth. That's why he never liked jar food) I think it depends on the nature of the food. For meat we still blend a bit and cook until quite soft before offering. For potato, pasta, pumpkin type of food that is easy to melt we just cook soft and then cut/ mesh into small pieces and let him gum on it. It may take a bit longer for him to finish up the meal but he gets a chance to practise the chewing. For your reference mine can swallow fried rice like what we eat. And he eats his toasts (cut into small cubes) without fuss. So maybe you'd like to try make the food lumpier to see if your little one accepts it.

Baby's not too keen on lumpier food.


I have fed him about half a teaspoon of italian meat sauce and indian fried chicken, and canned tuna (tiny bits of all while we were eating because he's curious) and he chewed ont hem as they weren't pureed.

he doesn' mind pasta and congee, but most other things i still have to purèe.


i went trhoug all the effort of cooking grated carrots, potatos, zuchinis and chopped broccoli, but that didn't go down too well, and ended up having to puree.

he does like eating scones. my husband gave him a pc and he nibbled and chewed (gummed) it for quite a while.

I have a 10 mth old with 4 top teeth and 3 bottom teeth. We stopped pureeing her foods when she was about 8 mths old. Instead, we mash or chop the ingredients. At first, she sort of choked/ coughed on the lumpier bits, but then she seemed to get used to the feeling. However, the food does need to be moist- she hates pieces of plain chicken or pasta that doesn't have enough sauce, etc. We moved onto finger foods about 3 weeks ago and it's gone well. She loves kiwi fruit (sliced and then halved again), guava sliced, apple slices (but she still tends to choke on these as raw apple is hard), broccoli/ cauliflower trees, baby carrots, sweet potato cubes, small squares of pita bread with hummus, cherry tomatoes cut in half, zucchini slices, asparagus spears, etc. All the veggies are steamed until soft. Tomorrow I'm giving her cubes of tofu for the first time. We also give her food off our plates, just break it into small pieces with our fingers and see what happens. I used to wonder how babies can break up the food if they have so few teeth, but as long as the food is soft, they can gum it to death/ suck on it to break it up. From what others have said, a lot depends on the baby. Mine was built for eating (she weighs about 21 pounds at 10 mths). My best suggestion is to use your instinct- make the food slightly more challenging bit by bit and experiment with the size of the chopped food, the texture, the moisture, etc. I also let baby eat the last 2 spoonfuls of mashed food by herself to get her used to feeding herself with a spoon. When I hold out the spoon to her, she turns the spoon upside down and sort of licks it off the food, if it hasn't already fallen off the spoon!