feeding jacob

sssiiiigggghhhhh.....not sure how else to express how i feel about feeding my child. jacob is 11 months old now. i fully expected that by this age he would be eating table food and at least be able to somewhat feed himself finger foods. nope. jacob has no teeth. obviously this makes eating finger foods difficult but not impossible. i asked a friend (whose son also didn't have teeth around this age) what kinds of finger foods i could give jacob. she sent me a list of tons of great ideas. all things that worked for her little man. jacob was eating cheerios for a while but would sometimes choke on them. all of a sudden he started choking on EVERYTHING. i had a few VERY scary meals with jacob. i have had to quickly get him out of his high chair, flip him over and hit his back until the food would come out (this first 2 times this happened i was with friends and they were the ones who did it. i was thankful that i was taught what to do before being in a situation where i had to do it myself). his face would go all red and you could tell he was scared. sometimes he would cough and gag so much that he would vomit. i became WAY too scared to feed him. over a month ago we went back to only giving him pureed foods until we saw the doctor. he told us to stop giving jacob foods that aren't pureed until he gets teeth.....which he still doesn't have. i honestly hate only giving him pureed foods. i SO BADLY want to give him finger foods. i know he would love to feed himself. i have let him suck on apple slices but sometimes he gets a piece off and we have to fish it out of his mouth (which freaks me out).

i have some fears around this issue. 1.) will he know how to eat non-pureed foods when the time comes or will he be so used to just swallowing his food as soon as it gets into his mouth that he won't chew? 2.) what if he chokes BADLY?? we have been lucky so far and he has been able to get the food out but it's SO scary and just thinking about giving him actual solid chunks of food makes me feel instantly nervous! i will not be ok feeding him finger foods unless i have someone else here with me for the first few times to make sure he can do it and so that i have someone here to call 911 if need be (yes, i always think worst case scenario)......maybe i should take a baby first aid class....do those exist?

has anyone else been through this with their kid/s? i don't want to be feeding him pureed food until he is 10 ;)