You’ve got the puree off the walls and the yoghurt off the carpet. It must mean it’s time to graduate to sharing three proper family meals a day with your baby. There must be a badge for this right?

Often by 9-12 months, your baby will be used to different flavours and textures and ready for the flavoursome combinations that proper meals will offer them. Dishes such as chicken casserole, fish pie, scrambled eggs and spaghetti bolognese are all now happily on the menu – just mash them up a bit to help them a bit when necessary. Why not get started with one of these recipes. As well as introducing solids, they’ll still need up to 500ml of milk a day too for all that growing they are busy doing.

Have fun creating new dishes for them. Try to include good sources of protein such as meat, fish, chicken, natural yoghurt and lentils, some carbohydrate such as rice, pasta, noodles and healthy fats such as plain yoghurt and cheese alongside all those yummy fruits and vegetables. But salt, sugar and honey are still off the table.

Once you've started your baby on solids, a typical menu will now look much more like the three meals a day you are used to e.g

You may find your baby now wants to hold the spoon and feed themselves which is both exciting and messy in equal parts. They will also be ready to start trying finger foods such as toast, pasta, breadsticks and sticks of vegetable or fruit. Just give them lots of variety and see what happens!

It is great to encourage independent feeding but choking is still a risk so don’t leave them alone whilst eating. It’s worth reading our Be Aware guide just to remind yourself of the key points.