A few days ago, there was some  talk about these issues. a few recent
articles in these areas: In JHL (Sept. '95) a commentary by Borresen
entitled "Rethinking Current Recommendations to Introduce Solid Food
Between 4 and 6 months to Exclusively BFing Infants".It also briefly
addresses iron supplementation.

the Winter '95 issues of Mothering has a big section on "Solid Foods:
When, What and How?"- incl. an
 article by Wm. Sears.

if their is a concern about iron, how about requesting a fingerstick
from the baby to settle everyone's minds- my firstborn spent her infancy
in MA, where at age 9 mos., this was routinely done as part of the
well-baby check up. I believe the main concern here was to test for lead
poisoning, but it also served well to check for any iron deficiency. As
it turned out, her iron level was fine(as was her lead level!) ; this
despite the fact that she really didn't start solid foods till about 1
year of age. In fact, all 3 of my kids were basically exclusively breast
fed for their first year.They simply didn't have interest in solids
before then, and it actually made life easier for us all. They all have
been very healthy kids, I never had any concerns about their well-being .

Ellen VEgh, LLLL from Pittsburgh, PA