Your 6-Month-Old Baby: Solids, Sitting and Half a Year

A 6-month-old baby is a different animal from the one you brought home. She sits — propped on her hands at first, then briefly unaided — laughs properly, rolls with purpose, and takes turns making noises at you like a conversation. This is also the month food arrives, which changes the shape of every day. Half a year is the point where the first year visibly splits in two. Here’s what’s normal at six months, what starts, and what’s worth a call.

Half a year: what’s new this month

The CDC’s six-month checklist covers what most babies (about 75%) can do by now. Socially: knowing familiar people, liking to look at herself in a mirror, and laughing. For language: taking turns making sounds with you, blowing raspberries, and making squealing noises. Cognitively: putting things in her mouth to explore them, reaching to grab a toy she wants, and closing her lips to show she doesn’t want more food — which is a feeding cue you’ll be using within days. For movement: rolling from tummy to back, pushing up with straight arms during tummy time, and leaning on her hands to support herself when sitting.

Sitting unsupported usually arrives somewhere in this window and improves fast — a startling distance from the hands-discovered, head-steady baby of the three-month post. Betteroo’s six-month milestone guide walks the same list with the typical spread. The six-month well visit is the formal review: growth plotted, full exam, development gone through item by item, immunizations per the CDC schedule, and — if you haven’t already — the solids conversation.

Starting solids

Current AAP guidance is to start solids at around six months, with readiness signs as the gate rather than the date: sitting upright with good head control, real interest in food, and the ability to move food from a spoon to the back of the mouth instead of pushing it out with her tongue. Milk stays the main event. Breast milk or formula still supplies most of her nutrition through the first year — early solids are practice, exposure and iron, not a replacement.

The AAP’s position on allergens is the part most parents haven’t caught up with, because it reversed the advice a generation of grandparents was given. There is no evidence that delaying baby-safe forms of eggs, dairy, soy, peanut products or fish beyond four to six months prevents food allergy — so common allergens go in early, one at a time, with a few days between new ones so you can see what caused what. The exception matters: babies with severe eczema and/or a known egg allergy should be discussed with a pediatrician, and may need allergy testing, before peanut is introduced. That is a conversation to have before the first spoon, not after.

Iron is the practical reason six months is the marker: iron stores from birth run down around now, so iron-rich first foods — meats, iron-fortified cereals, lentils, beans — earn their place early. Puree, baby-led weaning, or an unbothered mixture of both all work; Betteroo’s rundown of baby-led weaning is a fair account of what it does and doesn’t require. What matters more than the method is that she’s upright, supervised, and never eating in a car seat or a reclined bouncer. If you don’t want a full high chair yet, a strapped-in booster that belts onto a dining chair — the Ingenuity Baby Base 2-in-1 is the common one — gets her to the table and out of it again.

Two hard rules for the whole first year. No honey before twelve months, in any form, raw, pasteurized or baked into something — cooking doesn’t destroy the spores that cause infant botulism. And no choking hazards: whole grapes, chunks of meat or cheese, nuts, seeds, raw hard vegetables, popcorn, hard candy. Ask your pediatrician about how much water, if any, to offer with meals; there’s a small allowance once solids start and a real reason not to overdo it.

Sleep at six months

Sleep at half a year usually looks more like a schedule than a rumour. Total sleep across a day sits in the twelve-to-sixteen-hour range including naps, per the guidance the AAP endorses, most commonly as a long night stretch plus two or three naps — with the three-to-two nap drop starting to loom for some babies.

Night feeds at six months vary enormously and are still normal for many babies, particularly breastfed ones. Whether yours still needs one overnight is a weight-and-growth question for your pediatrician, not a number from a book. The safe-sleep floor is unchanged: on her back to start every sleep, own bare crib, firm flat surface, nothing else in it, no loose blankets or pillows for the full first year. Once she can roll both ways on her own, you don’t have to keep flipping her back.

The new sleep disruptors at six months are her own skills. A baby who has just learned to sit will sit up in the dark at 2am and then be furious about it. That passes with practice, usually within a couple of weeks.

Half a year in — and the whole day just changed Betteroo builds a gentle, personalized sleep plan around your baby's real age and rhythm, and keeps adapting it. Take the 2-minute sleep quiz →

Fitting food around milk

The practical version, for the first weeks of solids: offer food when she’s alert and reasonably content, not ravenous — a starving baby wants milk, not a spoon. Start with once a day and build. Expect most of it to end up on her chin, and expect her to close her lips and turn her head when she’s done, which is a real signal and worth respecting.

Milk feeds stay on their existing rhythm at first and taper only gradually across the second half of the year. If solids are visibly displacing milk in month one, raise it with your pediatrician rather than adjusting alone. And gagging is not choking: gagging is loud, red-faced and self-correcting; choking is silent. Knowing the difference before you start is worth more than any first-foods list.

Call the pediatrician if…

Call for: a fever of 100.4°F (38°C) or higher; a baby much harder to rouse than usual, floppy, or unusually limp; feeding or milk intake that drops off sharply, or fewer wet diapers than her normal; labored breathing — fast, grunting, ribs pulling in — or blue lips or face; any reaction after a new food such as hives, swelling, vomiting or wheezing (call 911 for breathing difficulty or swelling of the face or mouth); forceful projectile vomiting, or vomit that’s green or bloody; no laughing, no babbling or vocal turn-taking, no response to sounds; no rolling at all, or head control and sitting that seem to have gone backwards; a body that stays stiff or floppy; a strong persistent preference for one hand; or the plain “she seems off.” Everything smaller goes on the list for the visit. And for you: a mood that stays dark or frightens you is a same-day call to your OB or the PSI helpline.

FAQ: your 6-month-old

What foods should I start with at 6 months?

Iron-rich foods earn priority — meats, iron-fortified infant cereal, beans and lentils — alongside vegetables and fruit, in whatever texture suits your approach. Introduce one new food at a time with a few days between, so a reaction is traceable. Your pediatrician will tailor the order.

When should I introduce peanut and egg?

Early rather than late. AAP guidance finds no benefit in delaying baby-safe forms of common allergens beyond four to six months. The exception is a baby with severe eczema or known egg allergy, who should be assessed — possibly with allergy testing — before peanut is introduced.

Does a 6-month-old still need night feeds?

Many do, especially breastfed babies, and it’s a completely normal thing at half a year. Whether your baby still needs one overnight depends on her growth and weight, which makes it a pediatrician question rather than a milestone. Solids don’t reliably buy you a longer night.

What comes after six months?

Movement, textures and a baby who no longer stays where you put her — your 7-month-old is where the chasing starts. If it feels like a lot at once, look back at the five-month post: a month ago none of this existed. You’re doing fine.