The firsts
Weaning, briefly
Around six months, food starts. It is messier and less complicated than the internet suggests.
Solid food from around six months, alongside milk, which stays the main event for a good while yet.
Two camps exist online and both are wildly overinvested. Purée spoon-feeding works. Baby-led weaning with finger food works. Most families end up doing both and their children are fine.
Signs they are ready
All three, roughly together, usually around six months:
- Can sit up and hold their head steady.
- Can coordinate eyes, hands and mouth well enough to look at food and get it there.
- Can swallow food rather than pushing most of it back out.
Waking at night, chewing hands and watching you eat are not signs of readiness. They are just things babies do.
How it actually goes
- Start once a day, when they are not exhausted or ravenous.
- Offer, do not push. Ten refusals then acceptance is a normal arc for a new food.
- Expect very little to be eaten for weeks. That is fine. Milk is still doing the work.
- Let them get filthy. Interacting with the food is part of learning it.
- Eat at the same time as them where you can. Copying is most of the mechanism.
Foods to avoid in the first year
- Honey. Genuinely important, botulism risk.
- Whole nuts and anything the size and shape of a windpipe. Whole grapes, cherry tomatoes. Quarter them lengthways.
- Added salt and sugar. Their kidneys are not ready and you are setting a baseline.
- Unpasteurised cheese, raw shellfish, undercooked egg unless it is British Lion stamped.
Allergens
Current UK guidance is to introduce common allergens including egg and peanut deliberately from around six months, one at a time, in small amounts. Delaying them appears to increase risk rather than reduce it. If there is significant family allergy history or existing eczema, talk to your GP or health visitor before starting.
Gagging and choking are different
Gagging is loud, red-faced, effective and normal. It is the system working. Choking is quiet.
Learn the difference and do a paediatric first aid course. Many are two hours and free through local NHS or council schemes. It is the single most useful two hours you will spend this year.
Your job
Take some meals. Do the mess. Do the clean-up. And eat with them, because family meals starting now is a habit you get for free and cannot easily install later.