Weaning is the process of introducing solid foods to a baby’s diet, in addition to his or her milk feeds. The optimal time of weaning is based on a number of considerations, including the baby’s age, gestation at birth, health, development and growth rate. Weaning should start by six months but not before four months in healthy full term babies. This is the age at which milk feeds alone become insufficient to provide all the nutrients and calories babies need to grow and develop normally.

As your baby is offered new tastes and textures they have the opportunity to learn to like those tastes and get used to different textures. Babies will do this at different rates, so don’t assume that they will not eat certain foods if he or she seems reluctant to eat them at first. Babies need to have a small taste of some foods several times before he or she learns to like it.