Hellobee Boards

First daughter had no interest in food until a year. We were kind of concerned because we didn't know that it was reasonable for her to subsist on breast milk alone for that long... but I now am very familiar with the adage, "Under one, food just for fun".

Our second daughter was completely opposite. She showed all the feeding readiness cues very strongly at 5 months and has been eating heartily since!

I counsel parents that when their baby is showing marked interest in food, has good truncal control and is able to swallow their secretions, then they can think about feeding. I don't go by a strict age cut-off because all babies are different... just like my girls!

We started around 4 months because she showed signs of being ready. We really just experimented though with different foods until we started more regularly feeding her every day at 5 months.

@Mrs. Jacks: This is what our pediatrician told us. He told us if she shows interest and she seems ready as far as being able to support herself well and swallow things (which he saw when he gave her the oral vaccine that day) then he said whenever we wanted to start after 4 months was fine with him.

We offered it a week shy of 6 months. My ped reco's 6 months.
By like 4.5/5 months M had all the interest signs, good head control, no tongue thrust reflux etc. But I wanted to wait as close as 6 months as possible.

I firmly believe in food before one is just for fun as well! Although at 9.5 months now M is loving food and eats pretty much anything.

We started at 6 months. LO showed signs of interest before, but I also wanted to wait for the same reasons as @regberadaisy:. LO barely ate in the beginning, maybe one or two spoonfuls--she was more interested in our food than in her purees so we started doing a mix of baby led weaning and purees.

4 months - it had no impact on how much milk he consumed and even at 9 months he still drinks as much milk as before (and eats 3 solid meals a day).

we started at 4 months. he showed all signs of readiness and loved it.