How old was your child when you first introduced solids?

[MayimBialik]

By solids I mean anything other than breast or formula milk.

DS is 18 weeks. He's 90th percentile for weight and exclusively breastfed. He wakes constantly throughout the night (every 2 hours or so) but then has done for about 8 weeks. He watches is eat very intently and everything he picks up goes into his mouth.

I'm trying to hold off weaning for as long as possible but there is no way I will be able to wait until 6 months. My HV said absolutely do not give him solids before 20 weeks and the later after that the better. He refuses bottles so there is no way I can top him up with formula at the moment.

Also he was 2 weeks late so I wonder if I can add a couple of weeks to his age as far as his digestive system is developed?

23/24 weeks with both.

DD was 9th centile and 16 days late.
DS was 90-something and 1 day late.

Any time after 17 weeks is ok, the nearer 6mo the better though. I am lazy and BLW so I waited until mine were well able to feed themselves.

Watching you eat doesn't necessarily mean he's ready for solids - DD likes the look of my wine, but she's too young to drink it

I'll add, DS woke every 2-3 hrs or so until he was about 8mo.

Solids won't help with sleep (nor does FF)

DS was 23 weeks. He slept through from 8 weeks, weaning made no difference to this, he was a sleepy baby.

DD was 29 weeks, she was tiny and not ready for weaning until then. She loved it though and she slept through from the night she started having 2 reasonable sized meals a day, at about 7 1/2 months, and I think in her case weaning and sleeping through were related. She was waking purely from hunger, and solid food satisfied her for much longer. DD was eating things like beef stew, fish pie, omelettes, pasta bolognaise, etc. , she didn't sleep though at the start when she was trying out fruit and veg purees, which don't have many calories in them.

Several friends found weaning caused constipation or diahorrea, and that made sleeping worse until it was sorted out!

Thanks for your replies. I wouldn't use weaning as a way of getting him to sleep more - have kind of got used to 2 hourly feeding sessions at night. I'm going to try to go another month and start him at 5 months I think