Don't want her to start solids...

[galadriel]

I am in no hurry to start my 6 month old on solids, but she really wants food other than bm. When I'm eating an apple or a plum, she grabs it out of my hands and sucks on it. She's always grabbing my food, and if it ever happens to end up in her mouth, she seems to really like it.

I wonder if I would be doing her a disservice to wait another month or so. She is a very active girl, cruising and crawling and hopping all over the place, and her weight really plateaued when to she started crawling over the last couple of months. I feel this is normal, though, and I'm not really concerned about her weight or iron or anything. I've read that babies exclusively bf for 7 months have higher iron stores than those who start solids before 7 months, which is part of why I want to wait. I also like to take change slow, and I'm not quite ready for her to move on from being my little baby yet...

I guess I'm looking for some reassurance that this is reasonable, because I'm getting a little pressure to start her on cereal (which I'm not planning on at all, really) and it's upset my equilibrium a little bit.

She also doesn't have any teeth yet.

--Melissa

[AnnaReilly]

I started DD on solids at around 6 months because she seemed ready for them so I don't really have much input on waiting beyond that.

One thing that I don't know if you've thought of is that when you start solids you don't have to jump into an ounce a sitting, 3 times a day. You can just give her little samples of the things you eat, within reason (you may want to avoid potential allergens and overloading her with too many varieties right away.)

As for cereal, DD never had a drop of it! We just started right in on mashed up fruits and veggies (and she didn't have any teeth either.) Cereal-schmeereal!

ETA- I realized my post sounded like I was advocating starting solids at 6 months which I didn't mean to do... I just wanted to share my experiences. You need to do what you feel is best! I don't think you really NEED to start solids by any certain time. It's not like there's a magic window when babies must be introduced to solids or they won't learn to eat! :LOL

[Bippity]

No pressure - after all solids before one year are supposed to be about FUN anyway! I'm wanting to wait as long as we can, too!

I'd say, If she's enjoying the fruit you eat, I don't see a problem with letting her suck on it - just watch for her getting a chunk off of it. Don't want any choking! I bought one of those "baby safe feeders" with the mesh bag thing & it seems to work great - although it can get pretty messy! I like giving my DD real food just for the fun of it when she's interested. I am also making my own pureed stuff for her - none of the stinky jarred stuff for us. I'd say we've got about 6 months to just have fun with it! After about a year I suspect it'll be time to get more serious about incorporating actual meals for nutrition.

[wombat]

I had the same issue with dd at 6 1/2 mo so I gave her a little brown rice cereal (1 tbs with lots of BM). She loved it but I wanted to go real slow due to allergies in our families. So I'd give her 1tbs of solids every 3 days or so. Did this for several weeks. Found rice cereal so constipating, I just stopped it even though she loves it. Continued with just fruit & veges. At 8 mo, I think I started giving soids once a day.

I don't think you're doing her a disservice waiting another month or so. But like annareilly said, a little bit here and there isn't gonna hurt either. It is hard to stop giving them solids though once you start cause they expect it. Everytime we sit down to dinner and put dd in her highchair, she looks expectantly around for her food. Highchair and bib is now like waving a dog chain in front of a dog who wants to go for a walk!!

If you're gonna give her anything now, fruit and veges are often better tolerated than cereals and less constipating. Banana is constipating though.

Here's a good chart I found for introducing solids for the allergic infant. Not that mine is, but I think this chart is just quite conservative.
http://www.hallpublications.com/title2_sample2.html