First Foods Checklist and Allergen Tracker

Starting solids is the first stage where the record you keep genuinely matters clinically. Up to this point tracking is mostly for reassurance and handover. Here, an allergen log is the document a pediatrician or allergist will actually ask to see.

When to start is not a website's call

Readiness depends on your baby's development and your pediatrician's assessment, and guidance differs between countries and has changed over time, including the guidance on allergen introduction. Ask your pediatrician, follow what they tell you, and treat anything general you read online as background rather than instruction.

What this page can help with is the part after that decision: keeping a record good enough to be useful.

Why the allergen log is the important page

Allergen introduction is the one area where "I think it was a Tuesday, and he had a bit of a rash, maybe" is a genuinely inadequate answer. If a reaction occurs, the questions are specific: which food, how much, prepared how, how long afterwards, what were the symptoms, how long did they last, was it repeatable.

A written log answers all of that. Memory, several weeks and many meals later, does not.

Introduce one new allergen at a time with a gap between, so that if something happens you know what caused it. Your pediatrician will advise on the specifics and on how to do this safely for your baby.

Any suspected allergic reaction is a call to your pediatrician. Any difficulty breathing, swelling of the face or lips, or collapse is emergency services immediately.

Choking hazards are a separate topic from allergies

These get conflated and should not be. Allergy is an immune response. Choking is a mechanical risk about size, shape and texture, and it applies to foods that are otherwise perfectly safe. Round, firm and slippery is the risky combination, which is why advice exists about how grapes, cherry tomatoes and similar foods are prepared for small children.

Your pediatrician or health visitor is the right source for age-appropriate preparation, and it is worth asking explicitly rather than assuming. Many parents also choose to do infant first aid training around this stage.

Baby-led weaning, purees, or both

Both approaches have advocates, and plenty of families end up doing a mix without it being a problem. The tracking is identical either way: what was offered, in what form, how it went, and what happened afterwards. The printables in this kit do not push a method.

Teething arrives at the same time

Not coincidentally. Teeth and solids tend to overlap, and a fussy week during a food introduction is genuinely ambiguous, which is another argument for writing things down. A tooth chart alongside the food log lets you see whether a difficult stretch tracked a new food or a new tooth.

What is in the kit

The Starting Solids Kit is five printables included free with the New Mom Survival Kit: the first foods checklist covering 100 foods, the allergen introduction tracker, the food reactions and safety log, the teething guide and tooth tracker, and a daily solids feeding tracker. They pick up where the newborn feeding tracker leaves off.

Common questions