At 6 months, your baby is ready to start solid foods alongside breast milk or formula. The first foods should be iron-rich, soft enough to mash between your fingers, and offered in small amounts of 1 to 2 tablespoons per sitting. Breast milk or formula still provides most of your baby’s calories and nutrition at this stage, so solids are a supplement, not a replacement.
Signs Your Baby Is Ready
Not every baby hits the same milestones on the same day. Rather than going strictly by the calendar, look for these physical signs that your baby can handle solid food:
- Sits up alone or with support and can control their head and neck
- Opens their mouth when you offer food
- Swallows food rather than pushing it back out with their tongue
- Brings objects to their mouth and tries to grasp small items
- Transfers food from the front to the back of their tongue
That tongue-push reflex is a big one. If your baby still shoves food right back out every time, they likely need another week or two before trying again. Introducing solids before 4 months is not recommended regardless of how eager your baby seems.
Why Iron Matters First
Babies are born with iron stores that begin to run low around the 6-month mark. Breast milk alone can no longer keep up with their growing needs, so the foods you introduce should prioritize iron. Formula-fed babies get iron from their formula (typically fortified at 12 mg per liter), but they still benefit from iron-rich solids.
Good first sources of iron include pureed or finely shredded meats like chicken, turkey, and beef. These contain a form of iron the body absorbs easily. Plant-based options work too: mashed lentils, pureed beans, and iron-fortified infant cereal mixed with breast milk or formula. Pairing these with a vitamin C source, like a little mashed sweet potato or pureed strawberries, helps your baby absorb more iron from plant foods.
Best First Foods to Offer
There’s no single “right” first food. The outdated advice to start with rice cereal has given way to a much broader approach. Here are practical options that work well at 6 months:
- Meats: Pureed chicken, turkey, or beef. These are among the most nutrient-dense first foods you can offer.
- Vegetables: Mashed sweet potato, pureed peas, steamed and mashed carrots, butternut squash, or avocado.
- Fruits: Mashed banana, pureed peaches, applesauce (unsweetened), or mashed ripe pear.
- Legumes: Pureed lentils or black beans, which provide both iron and protein.
- Grains: Iron-fortified infant oatmeal or infant cereal mixed to a thin consistency.
Introduce one new food at a time and wait two or three days before adding another. This makes it easier to spot an allergic reaction or digestive issue if one occurs.
How Much and How Often
Start small. One to two tablespoons of food once or twice a day is plenty for a baby just beginning solids. Some days your baby will eat eagerly; other days they’ll clamp their mouth shut after one bite. Both are normal. At this age, the goal is exposure and practice, not volume.
Over the first few weeks, you can gradually work up to offering solids two to three times a day. By the time your baby is closer to 8 or 9 months, meals become more structured. But at 6 months, keep expectations low. Breast milk or formula feedings should continue on demand, and most babies still drink 24 to 32 ounces of formula (or nurse 4 to 6 times) daily.
You can also offer small sips of water from an open cup or straw cup with meals. The CDC recommends 4 to 8 ounces of water per day for babies between 6 and 12 months. More than that can fill their stomach and displace the breast milk or formula they still need, or in rare cases cause a dangerous drop in sodium levels.
Introducing Allergens Early
Current guidelines from the American Academy of Pediatrics are clear: there is no benefit to delaying allergenic foods. Once your baby is eating solids, typically around 6 months, you can and should begin introducing common allergens like peanut, egg, dairy, and sesame. Waiting longer does not prevent allergies and may actually increase the risk.
Start with small tastes. For peanut, mix a thin layer of smooth peanut butter into warm water, breast milk, or a puree your baby already tolerates. About 2 teaspoons of peanut butter is a reasonable portion once your baby shows no signs of reaction. For egg, offer about a third of a well-cooked scrambled or hard-boiled egg. Yogurt or small amounts of cheese work well for dairy. After introducing each allergen, keep it in your baby’s diet regularly rather than offering it once and forgetting about it for weeks.
If your baby has severe or persistent eczema, or has already had an allergic reaction to any food, talk with your pediatrician before introducing peanut. These babies are considered higher risk for peanut allergy and may benefit from earlier, supervised introduction as young as 4 to 6 months, sometimes after allergy testing.
Purees vs. Baby-Led Weaning
You’ll hear strong opinions about both approaches, but there’s no rule that says you have to pick one. Many families do a mix.
Spoon-feeding purees gives you more control over how much your baby eats and makes it easy to include nutrient-dense foods like pureed meat or lentils. The downside is that it can slow down the development of self-feeding skills, and it’s easier to accidentally overfeed when you’re the one controlling the spoon.
Baby-led weaning skips purees entirely and offers soft, finger-sized pieces of food that your baby picks up and feeds themselves. This approach supports fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, and chewing development. Babies who self-feed tend to eat according to their own hunger cues, which may help with appetite regulation. Early exposure to varied textures can also reduce picky eating later on.
If you go the baby-led route, the food needs to be soft enough to squish between your thumb and forefinger. Think steamed broccoli florets, strips of ripe avocado, or soft-cooked sweet potato sticks. Pieces should be roughly the size of an adult finger so your baby can grip them with a whole fist.
Foods to Avoid
Honey in any form is off-limits until your baby turns 1. Honey can contain spores of the bacterium that causes botulism. In adults and older children, healthy gut bacteria prevent these spores from multiplying. But a baby’s digestive system isn’t mature enough to fight them off, so the spores can convert back to active bacteria, multiply, and produce a dangerous toxin.
Choking hazards are the other major concern. Avoid these foods entirely or modify them carefully:
- Round foods: Whole grapes, cherry tomatoes, berries, and hot dogs. Always cut these lengthwise into thin strips, never into coin shapes.
- Hard raw produce: Raw carrots, raw apples, and celery. Cook them until soft before serving.
- Nuts and seeds: Whole or chopped nuts are a choking risk. Use smooth nut butters thinned with liquid instead of serving them by the spoonful, which can also stick in a baby’s throat.
- Sticky or chewy foods: Marshmallows, gummy candies, chewy fruit snacks, and chewing gum.
- Tough meats: Large chunks or stringy pieces. Shred or puree meat instead.
Also skip added sugar, added salt, cow’s milk as a drink (though cooked dairy in food is fine), and unpasteurized juices. These either strain immature kidneys, displace nutritious calories, or pose food safety risks.
What a Typical Day Looks Like
In the first few weeks of solids, a 6-month-old’s day still revolves around milk. A realistic schedule might look like this: nurse or bottle-feed first thing in the morning, then offer a small solid meal mid-morning when your baby is alert but not starving. Another solid feeding can happen in the late afternoon or early evening, with breast milk or formula feedings continuing in between and before bed.
Keep meals short, around 10 to 15 minutes. If your baby turns their head away, pushes food out, or starts fussing, the meal is over. Forcing food creates negative associations with eating. At this stage, even a few bites count as a successful meal. The variety and volume will build naturally over the coming weeks as your baby gets more practice with chewing, swallowing, and handling new textures.