Weaning Timeline: 6 to 12 Months

The shape of the six months

Complementary feeding, as the WHO calls it, is the process of adding food once milk alone is no longer enough. Both the NHS and Ireland's HSE break the same six-month journey into stages, and the stages are defined by skill rather than by menu. The HSE summarises the whole arc in one sentence: it "starts with the first spoon feeds at about 6 months. By 12 months, your baby should be enjoying family meals."

Around six months: one meal, a few teaspoons

The first stage is deliberately small. The HSE suggests starting with one teaspoon of soft smooth purée, building to six teaspoons at one sitting, then adding a second mealtime, and progressing to two or three meals a day with five to ten teaspoons at each. New foods go in one at a time, every two to three days.

The skills being learned at this stage, as the HSE lists them, are taking food from a spoon, moving food from the front to the back of the mouth to swallow, and managing purées that gradually get thicker. Drinks are breast milk, infant formula and water.

NHS Best Start in Life's equivalent stage focuses on single vegetables and fruits, including bitter-tasting vegetables, and on getting your baby used to the idea of eating rather than on quantity.

Seven to nine months: three meals take shape

NHS Best Start in Life describes this as the stage where "your baby will gradually move towards eating 3 meals a day (breakfast, lunch and tea)", with variety across the food groups mattering increasingly because iron and energy needs are rising.

The HSE's stage two, six to nine months, is the same period viewed through portions: three meals a day of about two to four tablespoons each, food offered before the milk feed, some drinks from a cup or beaker, and, in Irish guidance, two to three snacks between meals. Formula sits at three to four feeds a day, roughly 600ml in total.

Foods added at this stage in Irish guidance include well-cooked eggs, porridge and breakfast cereals such as wheat biscuits or smooth oat-based cereal, bread, rice and pasta, pasteurised cheese and yogurt, smooth peanut butter without added sugar or salt, and meat, poultry, fish, peas, beans and lentils. Pasteurised cows' milk can be used in small amounts to moisten food, though not as a drink.

Texture moves faster than menu here. The NHS instruction is to move on to mashed, lumpy foods and finger foods as soon as your baby can manage them. The HSE lists the skills as moving from thick purées to mashed food to soft lumps, chewing lumps, starting to self-feed with soft finger foods, and drinking from a beaker or cup.

Ten to twelve months: family food

By this stage, NHS Best Start in Life expects your baby to be used to three meals a day in addition to milk feeds, with lunch and tea able to include a main course and a pudding such as fruit or unsweetened yoghurt. Vegetables, fruit and starchy foods are now offered mashed, lumpy, chopped or as finger foods, and self-feeding gets easier.

The HSE's stage three, nine to twelve months, describes most family foods as suitable, without added gravies, sauces, salt or sugar. Portions are around four to six tablespoons at each of three meals, plus two to three snacks in Irish guidance, and your baby should be able to manage more than two textures in one meal. All drinks other than breastfeeds are taken from a cup or beaker. Formula drops to a maximum of 400ml a day.

The one instruction repeated at every stage

No salt, no sugar, in the food or in the cooking water. The NHS gives the reasons every time: salty food is not good for a baby's kidneys and sugar causes tooth decay. When you are adapting family meals, this is the constraint that decides whether the dish works, and it usually means holding back the stock cube, the soy sauce and the seasoning until the baby's portion is out.

How the CDC frames the same period

The CDC keeps it to a rhythm rather than stages: give your child something to eat or drink every two to three hours, or five or six times a day, which works out at about three meals and two to three snacks. Portions start at one or two tablespoons, and children's bellies "are small and cannot hold a lot of food". It also notes the thing that catches parents out at the far end: from around twelve months growth slows, so a child might go a couple of days without eating much, and the week is the right unit to judge intake over rather than the day.

Milk through the whole period

Breast milk or first infant formula remains the main drink for the entire first year. The CDC states that milk continues to be the main source of nutrition from six to twelve months while solids gradually take a bigger share. Cows' milk can be used in cooking or mixed with food from around six months but is not a main drink until twelve months. Follow-on formula is not needed at any point.

Days when nothing works

Both services build this into the timeline rather than treating it as a problem. NHS Best Start in Life says there will be days when your baby eats more, days when they eat less, and days when they reject everything, and calls this perfectly normal. The advice is to be patient, keep offering variety including the foods they do not seem to like, and let them get used to things in their own time. The NHS puts the repetition figure at ten tries or more; the HSE says up to fifteen.

Babies born early

Weaning timing for a premature baby is worked out with a health professional rather than from the calendar, because corrected age and developmental readiness can pull in different directions. Both the NHS and the HSE have separate guidance for this, and it is a conversation for your health visitor or public health nurse.

When to raise it

Talk to a health visitor or public health nurse if your baby is not managing lumps by the later part of the first year, if meals have not increased in number by around nine months, if weight gain has faltered, or if mealtimes have become consistently distressing for either of you.