Weaning

As Baby Girl is now six months I've been thinking about weaning quite a lot recently. Officially we are supposed to wean at six months - no earlier and no later. To me it just seemed crazy that all babies would need weaning at exactly the same age. After all, they don't do anything else (sitting, standing, laughing, walking etc.) at the same time so why would this be any different? Baby Girl was showing no signs of needing food when she turned six months so it didn't feel right to start giving her food. The only thing was that supposedly they need solids because of needing iron. (Although apparently you don't need to worry about iron if you are formula feeding - another example of breastmilk being portrayed as inferior!) This just didn't seem right to me. I know we live in a fallen world but surely if the milk provides enough energy then it will provide the right nutrition including iron. Well I did a bit of reading around and found out that there was a study done (Pisacane A, et al. Iron status in breast-fed infants. J Pediatr 1995 Sep;127(3):429-31) which found that babies exclusively breastfed for seven months had higher iron levels at 12 months than those who were not. I found loads of helpful information at Kellymom and we've decided to wait and see rather than starting just because she's an arbitrary age.