Starting Solids at 6 Months: The Complete Beginner's Guide

It's less about hitting exactly six months and more about developmental readiness, head control, interest in food, and the ability to move food to the back of the mouth rather than pushing it back out. Current guidance across the US, UK, EU, and Australia/NZ converges on the same rough window: around six months, not before four. Your paediatrician is the right person to confirm timing for your own baby.

This is the debate that seems to generate the most anxiety and the least actual disagreement in outcomes. Purées mean spoon-feeding soft, blended food; baby-led weaning means offering soft finger-shaped foods your baby feeds themself from the start. We go through the actual trade-offs, not just the marketing version of each, in our baby-led weaning vs traditional weaning breakdown.

Iron-rich foods matter more early on than most first-food advice mentions, since a baby's iron stores start running low around six months. We laid out what to offer at each stage from four months through twelve in a separate first foods by age checklist, since 'what do I actually give them today' is a different question from 'what's the theory.'

The guidance shifted hard over the last decade, since the LEAP study found early peanut introduction lowered allergy rates in high-risk infants: early, deliberate introduction of common allergens, not avoidance, is now the standard recommendation nearly everywhere, a shift covered in more depth in our ASCIA guideline breakdown. Which foods count as major allergens differs slightly by country; we cover the US's 9, the EU and UK's 14, and Australia/NZ's list separately, along with a straight side-by-side comparison of all four. Our peanut and egg posts cover specific schedules, worth a read alongside your paediatrician's advice.

Choking hazards are worth understanding properly before the first meal, not after a scare; we go through what's genuinely risky and why in our choking hazards guide. Honey before 12 months is a separate risk, infant botulism, not choking, but worth knowing before it ends up on the plate.

Somewhere around week three we stopped being able to remember what we'd actually offered, what caused the odd rash on Tuesday, or whether we'd hit peanut yet this week. That's the entire reason the app exists: log each meal, track allergen introduction status, and flag foods that need a second look, so the answer to 'wait, have we done shellfish yet' is a lookup, not a guess.