I have a question that a BB member and I were pondering yesterday while we drank tea and ate biscuits while BF our kiddies. Now the MCHN approach of "introduce solids at 6 months" appears to stem from a concern about the level of iron that babies have stored from birth, and the fear of that tapering off steeply from 6 months. We were wondering whether it is that the human body can only store "6 month's worth" of iron, so to speak, or whether, on average, the amount of iron a baby gets in utero runs out at about 6 months. If it is the former, that seems odd, because cavewomen didn't have vitamisers, so couldn't puree food, and certainly didn't have iron-enriched rice cereal at their disposal. If it is the latter, then surely the amount of iron stored by the baby would be dependant upon how healthy the mother's iron levels were during pregnancy? In which case, if a woman is anaemic in the last few months her bub might really need the iron at about 6 months, or even earlier (?), but if she had normal to high iron levels (as I did, when tested at 38 weeks) then the food-at-6-months-because-of-iron-deficiency argument would really fall down.

I do not mean to add to the debate about early intro of solids or the pros or cons of pureeing, but I am interested if anyone knows anything about this bypothesis. Opinions are welcome of course (!) but if anyone has the "facts" it would be appreciated