When do solids start?

Six months is what the WHO recommends. napnap shows the section from five months, because the month before is when it gets prepared, and it will not let a date be set before four months completed.

Why start with vegetables and not fruit?

Because sweet needs nobody to teach a liking for it, and vegetables do. It is the one thing in the order worth not changing.

Is this medical advice?

No. The order and the waits come from what has been published by the WHO, the AEP, AEPap, ESPGHAN and AECOSAN, and the decisions belong to each household with their own doctor.

Starting solids: the order, the iron and the textures

The question is not «what do I give them?», it is «in what order, and what cannot wait?». Two things have a date on them —iron and textures— and everything else can be moved.

Iron cannot wait until the fourth month of purées

A baby is born with iron stores that run out around six months, and milk no longer supplies them. Between seven and twelve months they need around 11 mg a day, more per kilo than at any other stage of their life.

That is why a plan of «a month of vegetables, one of fruit, one of cereal and meat in the fourth» leaves iron until nine months, exactly when they have spent three burning through their stores. In napnap, from the second week on, one of the three new things is always a source of iron.

Three new things a week, and two major allergens at most

One new food every two or three days is what lets a reaction show before it gets mixed in with the next one. With major allergens the wait is the same but the margin for error is not, so they go in further apart.

Allergens are not delayed: delaying them protects against nothing, and the advice today is the opposite — offer them early and keep offering them.

The window for textures, which is the date that is not negotiable

By 8 to 10 months at the very latest they have to be out of smooth purée. Stretching it beyond that is paid for later in refusal and in trouble eating.

The pace up to then is the household's to choose —with pieces from early on you get there in three weeks, with blending it takes nine— but the floor holds: a slow pace cannot leave a ten-month-old on baby food.

What waits by age, and why

Honey until a year, because of botulism. Spinach, chard and beetroot until a year, because of nitrates. Tuna and swordfish, because of mercury. The head of a prawn, because of cadmium. Salt in sliced bread. Dairy from nine months.

Every wait has a reason behind it, and those are the only ones that cannot be moved. The rest of the order is a proposal: a house may have a doctor who says otherwise, an allergy in the family, or no fish at the market that week.

And how many times to offer something before giving up

Eight to fifteen exposures for a flavour to stop being new. A «they do not like it» written down on the second attempt is what makes a food disappear from a house for good.

napnap actually counts: two acceptances make it «they like it», and it takes five refusals with no acceptance at all to say it is not to their taste.

Questions

When do solids start?: Six months is what the WHO recommends. napnap shows the section from five months, because the month before is when it gets prepared, and it will not let a date be set before four months completed.
Why start with vegetables and not fruit?: Because sweet needs nobody to teach a liking for it, and vegetables do. It is the one thing in the order worth not changing.
Is this medical advice?: No. The order and the waits come from what has been published by the WHO, the AEP, AEPap, ESPGHAN and AECOSAN, and the decisions belong to each household with their own doctor.