Starting Solids at 6 Months: A Parent's Guide

Starting solids is one of those parenting transitions that has changed dramatically in the last fifteen years, which is why advice from your mother and advice from your health visitor sometimes don't match. The big shifts: solids start later than they used to (around six months, not four), there is no required order of foods, and allergens go in early rather than being held back. Most of the rules you may have grown up with are out of date.

This guide covers when to start, how to spot readiness, what to offer, and how to handle allergens — in a way that should let you start without checking five different websites for every spoonful. As you go, jot down what's been tried and any reactions you notice. The Healthbooq app has a food diary that makes this easy and is genuinely useful in a health visitor conversation.

When to Start

Around six months is what the WHO, NHS, and most national authorities now recommend. The phrase is "around six months" rather than "at six months" because babies vary by a few weeks either way. The hard floor is four months — before that, the gut and kidneys aren't ready, and there is good evidence early starts increase risks like obesity and infections later.

The thing many first-time parents find surprising: solid food at six months is supplementary, not a replacement for milk. Breast milk or formula stays the main calorie and nutrient source until around twelve months. Early solids are about exposure — flavours, textures, the mechanics of chewing and swallowing — not about filling them up. The volumes in the first month are tiny, and that is exactly as it should be.

The Three Readiness Signs

You want all three before starting, not just one or two:

1. Sitting with minimal support. Head steady, trunk reasonably stable. This matters both for safe swallowing and for the eating-as-a-social-thing piece.
2. Tongue-thrust reflex gone. The instinct to push anything foreign back out with the tongue. If every spoonful comes straight back out, the reflex is still there — give it another week or two.
3. Real interest in food. Tracking food from your plate to your mouth, reaching for your fork, opening their mouth when something comes close. This one is the strongest signal of all three.

Two things sometimes get cited as readiness but aren't: waking more at night and being generally fussy. Both are far more likely to be normal sleep changes or a need for more milk than a need for solids. Starting solids earlier in the hope of better sleep doesn't reliably work and the evidence is mixed at best.

What to Offer

The single most important nutrient in early weaning is iron. Babies are born with stored iron from pregnancy, and those stores start running down around six months. Breast milk has very little iron, formula has more, and solid food is now expected to fill the gap. Prioritise:

• Well-cooked meat or poultry, finely chopped or pureed
• Oily fish (salmon, sardines, mackerel) — once or twice a week
• Cooked egg (whole, including the yolk)
• Iron-fortified baby cereals
• Beans and lentils, well-cooked

Around these, build out a variety of vegetables, fruits, and starches — in whatever texture suits the approach you're using. Mild herbs and spices are fine and helpful; you don't need to keep food bland. The taste window for accepting new flavours starts to narrow around 18 months, so the wider your repertoire in the first year, the better.

A practice that used to be standard but is no longer recommended: introducing one new food at a time with three days between each. You don't need to do this except for major allergens (see below). Offering combinations, including foods you happen to be eating yourself, is fine.

Purees, Baby-Led, or Both?

This used to be a fight; it isn't really one now. The research shows similar outcomes for growth, development, and nutritional intake across both approaches. Most families end up doing a blend — purees on a spoon some of the time, soft finger foods other times — and that works fine.

If you go the puree route, move through textures faster than you might think: smooth at first, then lumpy by seven or eight months, then soft pieces. Babies who stay on smooth purees too long can struggle to manage textures later.

If you go the baby-led route, the rules are: soft enough to squash between your finger and thumb, sized for a palmar grip in the early months (think batons rather than peas), upright in the chair, never unattended, and you stay with them every single time. Gagging is normal and protective — it's loud and dramatic but it is the body's safety mechanism, not choking. Choking is silent. Both approaches require knowing the difference and knowing what to do — a paediatric first aid course before you start is well worth the time.

Foods to avoid for choking risk regardless of approach: whole grapes (quarter them), whole nuts (use smooth nut butter thinned with milk or yoghurt), large round food like cherry tomatoes, hard raw apple chunks, and anything with skins or pips left on.

Allergens — Early and Often

This is where the advice has changed most. Twenty years ago, parents were told to delay peanut, egg, and other common allergens in babies at high risk. The LEAP trial (Du Toit et al., NEJM, 2015) and several follow-up studies decisively reversed that — delayed introduction increased rather than decreased peanut allergy risk in high-risk infants. Current guidance: introduce common allergens from around six months and keep them in the regular diet.

The eight to watch are peanut, tree nuts, egg, dairy, wheat, fish, soy, and sesame. Practical rules for introducing them:

• One at a time, two or three days apart, so a reaction is attributable
• At home, not at nursery or a restaurant
• In the morning or early afternoon, so you can observe for 2–4 hours afterwards
• Small amount on the first taste, building up over the next few days
• Once tolerated, keep it in the diet weekly — this is the part most families skip and it matters. Tolerance maintenance requires regular exposure.

Reactions, if they happen, almost always show up in the first two hours: hives, swelling around the mouth or eyes, vomiting, breathing changes. Most babies have no reaction at all to any of them. A mild rash on the chin from acidic foods (tomato, citrus, strawberry) is irritation, not allergy.

If your baby has severe eczema, an existing food allergy, or a strong family history of allergy, talk to your GP or health visitor before introducing peanut and egg — sometimes a referral for in-clinic introduction is offered. For everyone else, doing it yourself at home is the standard.

What's Normal in the First Few Weeks

Some realistic expectations:

• Most of the food ends up on the floor, the bib, or in their hair
• Volumes are small for weeks — a teaspoon or two on the first day, building over a month
• They will reject foods they accepted yesterday and accept foods they rejected last week. This is normal, not personal.
• New foods often need 8–10 exposures before they are accepted. "He doesn't like avocado" after one try is premature.
• Stools change. They become firmer, smellier, and may show undigested bits of food. Beetroot and blueberries can do alarming things to colour.

The biggest mindset shift that helps: solids in the first three months are practice, not nutrition. The job is exposure, not finishing the bowl. A relaxed parent at the table is more useful than the perfect spoonful.

Around six months is the right time for most babies to start solids — sooner if all three readiness signs are clearly there (sitting unsupported, tongue-thrust gone, real interest in food), but not before four months. Iron is the nutrient that matters most in the first weeks of weaning, because babies' iron stores start running low around six months. Purees, baby-led, or a mix of both — all work; the texture format matters less than a relaxed mealtime. Introduce common allergens early and keep them in the diet — delaying them increases allergy risk, not the other way around.