To be honest, Small needed to go through the gagging learning curve in order to work out how to deal with all of the different textures. She'd gag pretty often in the early days but after about 6 weeks or so it really tailed off, until at 9 months I can't remember the last time she gagged. So - my personal feeling is not to try to avoid causing the gagging but rather to let them work through it. The theory is that you shouldn't need to be hoiking anything out of her mouth - she should be able to work it out herself. This can take an inordinately long time but Small does always eventually spit out anything she can't cope with. You could try steaming the pear a bit (if its on the hard side) then, if she does bite off a goodly-sized piece it should mush down in her mouth quite quickly. If she is bringing up a lot of stuff when she is gagging, it could be that her gag reflex is a bit over-sensitive (a friend is going through this at the moment with her son) and she'll need a bit of time to grow out of it. BTW - my only choking incident with Small was very recently when she developed delusions of competance with a pear and tried to swallow without chewing it at all.