I agree there is so much information out there and so many varying 'rules' but I think you could get just as many differing opinions here about weaning.
In the UK guidance is almost anything from 6 months, no need to introduce one food at a time or to do 3 or 4 days of the same food (and IMO that causes more gastro problems. My LO is firmed up or constipated by carrots, you'd think carrots a great first food and they were but they wouldn't have been great for 4 days running without any other food to counteract the effect - ie prunes, neither would I introduce prunes alone for 4 days, imagine the nappies and cramps!). There are limits though, very very little salt (I followed salt regs rigidly since I read about an increase of babies with problems due to high salt diets and I'm sure the mums didn't even realise), no sugar, no honey, no whole nuts, no raw fish. The limits are few but important. Many/all areas now advise BLW (baby led weaning, there's a support thread and recipe threads with with food ideas) rather than puree weaning, but if you choose the puree route it's worth noting that finger foods are still advised to be introduce from 6 months, the time of offering purees is short, like a couple of weeks before it goes thicker, then mashed then lumps and rapidly moves to regular family meals, it isn't months and months of puree the way many people still think of weaning because babies were much younger when people offered purees for a longer time.
My advice would be to alter your cooking to make it baby friendly rather than making specific puree foods for baby. I stopped adding salt to all meals at the point of cooking and that way I could offer DS everything I ate. His salt allowance for the day would be used up in a piece of cheese and half a slice of bread, or a spoon of canned tuna mixed through pasta for instance. I also learned to make sugar free biscuits, muffins, pancakes etc which I'd never made before. I chose BLW and it was amazing, a wonderful experience, but by cooking with baby in mind you could puree/mash all or part of the family meal if you didn't choose BLW. Long and short is, home cooking from fresh produce and a balance of the food groups is the best thing to feed your LO, whether it is pureed or finger food or mashed, whether it's a recipe from this baby recipe book or that one this web site or that is neither here nor there. Not really. There are apparently benefits to BLW in terms of speech development and fine motor skill but I can't imagine it hindering a baby's speech by being fed puree. What I really loved about BLW was that we sat and ate together, we both ate, I didn't feed, he fed himself, and I really do think this set up a great eating habit, and DS learned a lot about food from watching me eat and from learning that meal times are times we come together as a family, that they matter.
That's my thought
