It seems that most people do it on a very early age and it seems to mean that baby stops taking human milk and goes onto solids. But why is it such a hot topic, why does baby have to take full meals at 1 yo.
The WHO recommends 1 year and beyond. So what is the rush?
To me weaning doesn't mean that baby is force fed solids and is withheld human milk. To me a natural way of letting baby gradually go from a diet of only human milk to a diet of all kinds of other foods goes very very slowly. As from about 6 months, when baby shows signs of readiness (those are sitting up, being able to pick food up and put it in its mouth and being able to actually eat it, iso spit it out again) baby can grab food from out plates. Baby doesn't have to, when baby is ready this happens.
Slowly but carefully this means that baby will take more and more from the plate. There is no need to puree anything when you let baby do the work itself.
So after a while, this can be years, baby will eat full meals, some are faster than others. When mother keeps offering human milk as well, she is sure that baby will get all the nutrients it needs, besides the immune system isn't ready until 6, so what's the rush?
The child could do with an additional boost of immunity from human milk.
Here is a nice link on the natural age of weaning, it makes quite clear that humans aren't ready to be weaned at 6 mos or earlier, but much much later.
http://www.kathydettwyler.org/detwean.html
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