This is also anecdotal.
My first child started solids when he was nine months old. I fed him rice puree 
when he was six months and he gagged and threw up and my husband said 
that this was rediculous, he would eat when he was hungry, which he did. The 
rest of my kids started solids from 12 to 14 months.  They gained beautifully 
and never had low iron. One of them was so healthy looking that someone on 
the street commented that he must be a 'cornflour baby' (In Israel in those 
days, underweight babies would be fed formula thickened with cornstarch) I 
took another to our family doctor when he was about a year old. He asked if 
he was still nursing, then he picked him up and pretended to stagger to the 
examination table. Then he turned to me and asked, "What do have in there, 
cement?"
My last baby refused solids until he was well over one and a half and then ate 
very little. We were worried but, even though he was thin, he wasn't 
underweight. I was pushed into weaning him just before he was two, due to 
my health problems. This was the earliest I ever weaned a baby.( I still regret 
it and anyway I had a terrible reaction to that particular medication and went 
off it two weeks later and took care of the whole thing with alternative 
medicine) Anyway, six months later he was diagnosed with possible 
autoimmune hepititus. He was a very sick boy for a long time. He  refused to 
eat anything but vanilla pudding. All of the health professionals said, "At least 
he's eating, don't worry about it" Wow, did I wish I was nursing. 
T.G. he is fine today; despite international consultations with the top pediatric 
gastros in Israel, the US and South Africa no one could ever figure out what 
was really wrong with him. To this day he is a very picky eater. I think already 
in his babyhood his body was trying to tell him something.
Conjecture perhaps, but there you have it.

About twenty years ago I attened a lecture by Professor Edelman, then head 
of Neonatology at Sharei Tzedek Medical Center. He is very pro nursing and he 
said that even though most babies begin solids between six and nine months, 
you don't have to introduce solids until eighteen months as long as there are 
no health problems due to lack of food and the child makes all developemental 
milestones. Now I know this old information and I don't know if I would have 
the nerve to say this to a client;  it does go against conventional medical 
practice but, as I said before, there you have it.

Yael Edelstein
ICEC BFC
Israel

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