Need Help with Info on Nutrition and/or Vitamins for a Toddler

I'm not sure about the vitamins issue, but I will say that I went from my first word to sentences that sounded like an inteligent toddler between 9 months old and 10.5 months. However this early talking lead to things like me walking much later than normal dispite being physically able to. The problem isn't precocious children, but kids who don't have limits. Even an advanced child has limits. It won't matter how advanced the baby is if there's either a solid reason for the advancement or if she is ether on track for her age or slightly delayed in other ways.

Not all, but many infants are exclusively or primarily breast feed or formula fed at exactly one year (by eighteen months, it is pretty likely they will eat small meals at mealtimes and have the bottle or nurse more for snacking inbetween meals). Formula is intended to be nutritionally complete in the same way that breastmilk is, however, I believe the formula that you'd give a one year old would be a bit different than the formula for a younger baby, so you'd want your teenaged character to be aware of that, ideally. Other supplements that are often recommended by pediatricians for infants are, actually, iron drops, and Vit. D drops (assuming northern climates, usually); ones that are specifically formulated for babies in dosage. However, these are recent recommendations and I wouldn't consider them critical in your situation (nice, yes, critical, no).

So yes, if your baby is only one year old (and not just somewhere between one and two-- a lot of developmental changes occur during that year) and your teenager can get his hands on the appropriate formula, further supplementation wouldn't be strictly necessary. Edit: I should mention that weaning, whether from the boob or the bottle, is not an instant process. It's something you (ideally) cut down one feeding at a time, over the space of months. It's not abnormal at all around here for a freshly 2yo toddler to have a bottle once or twice a day, but it would be very abnormal for a 1yo to have no bottle. A common mantra in my mommy groups was "food before one is just for fun" as a reminder that it's not necessary and milk is. And the milk doesn't magically dry up overnight on the first birthday, either, and babies don't automatically switch without a long weaning process. I mean, cold turkey has to happen in some scenarios, but it's definitely not ideal for anyone.

As far as the baby lifestyle goes, a one year old will be freshly walking or trying to, wanting the bottle every four hours or so, curious about table food but probably more interested in playing with it than eating it, and babbling but not talking (but will have pretty good receptive language skills, that is, they will understand a lot even if they aren't talking yet). Barring sleep problems, two naps a day and a full night's sleep would be relatively accurate (but sleep can really vary so much; my first kid slept eight hours or more each night at four months, then stopped doing that at six months, then began again at ten months and has slept beautifully since, and my second never slept through the night until he was almost two and still wakes up wanting something or other frequently enough at almost four.) Naps will be anywhere from 30 minutes to a couple hours; shorter naps will mean more crankiness and more naps later, hopefully.

If your teenager has a mobile lifestyle, he will want some sort of baby carrier so he can strap the baby on and go hands free. Some babies hate these devices, but often they love them as it allows more cuddling and they fall asleep easier that way often. Especially if your baby has had much trauma related to switches in caregivers (I assume the teenager hasn't always been caring for her) then she may be especially clingy and have some separation anxiety which is where a baby carrier would be a godsend for your teenager (otherwise he will get nothing done, lol).

There's this great chart about baby development on a week by week basis that I used to see floating around the 'webz when I had infants; I'll go and see if I can find it for you.

At 11 months, I was walking, talking, and out of diapers. The first two are fairly common, I think, but not so much the last one, which means that your guy won't only have to make arrangements for what goes in, but also what comes out.

You can teach a child basic sign language for communication before most of them are capable of coherent speech. They know what they want to convey, but can't vocalize it. However, if given a manual means of communication, they'll use it.

Your best bet might be to have the pair stumble across an abandoned cache of powdered formula or vitamins or pedialite, or other nutritional supplements.

(Extreme cases of rapid development in exceptional children have seen some speak before they can even sit up, btw.)

The best way to get vitamins and minerals and the other good stuff like fiber and acids (that you also need) is to eat fruits and veggies and everything else. That's what a baby needs. Supplements supplement a diet, they don't replace large deficiency in one.

That premium for fresh produce actually sounds pretty good for a story-telling perspective. If he has to pay a lot, that means he'll have to work and fight harder in order to get good food for the child. While it's not the most exciting scene, it can be a very telling one for a guy arguing over the price of milk with a baby slung on his chest. That's what I think. Then also, spending money on children's supplements (which might have a premium of their own) to put into cheap food doesn't sound too practical.

This appears to be the chart I was thinking of. It's not quite as great as I remember, but you can have it anyway.

Speaking more than a few token words (mama, dada, hi, bye, car) is not normal before one year. http://www.asha.org/public/speech/development/chart/

There's no need to limit to single-syllable words - mama, dada, baba, for instance, are not.

That'd work; there's a huge variation in language acquisition, but a year-old with a few words is very normal, as long as you mean around 12 months, not 23 months (still technically a year, but single words and babbling would be decidedly more unusual).

Really surprised at "food before one is just for fun". I remember Little Scone eating a lot of solids by the age of one. She was still taking a lot of milk, too, which provides most nutrients, but I remember being specifically warned to watch out for iron deficiency, as the milk doesn't provide enough.

OP, if the kid is 1, her primary nutrition will still be milk or formula, so that takes care of calcium. If iron supplements are not available, he will have to be trying harder to wean her onto solid food, specifically getting red meat and/or dark green veg into her.

If he doesn't have access to breast milk or good formula designed for humans and for the correct age, he's going to struggle to avoid malnutrition. If she was closer to 2 and he had access to a balanced adult diet, it's less of a problem.

Most infant cereals are fortified.

Formula is fine. It's made to be nutritionally balanced, with all the necessary vitamins. There's also something called 'follow-on milk' that's basically formula geared towards older babies. As far as I know it's not really necessary if the kid's getting an otherwise balanced diet, but in a situation like this it would be pretty useful.

I assume you mean she's around 12 months old, right, rather than 23? Because the nutritional needs are pretty different. A 12-month-old's main source of nutrition is still breastmilk/formula, while a 23-month-old's is solid food.

If she's dark-skinned or they're not getting a lot of sunlight, she needs Vitamin D drops or she could end up with rickets. A pale-skinned baby getting a decent amount of sunlight should be OK.

Keep in mind that kids do have personalities basically from Day 1. You get fearless kids who dive into new experiences, high-strung ones who melt down if they're overstimulated, deep thinkers who sit back and observe, clingers who howl if they're put down, hyper ones who just can't stop moving... You might want to adjust her personality depending on how much you want her to be a presence in the action. A chilled-out observer-type one-year-old will sit in a carrier/lap/chair chewing on something and watching the action for long periods of time, while a more high-octane one is going to be wiggling and complaining and trying to get down and go places within minutes unless something really interesting is going on.

Tottie Scone said:

Really surprised at "food before one is just for fun". I remember Little Scone eating a lot of solids by the age of one. She was still taking a lot of milk, too, which provides most nutrients, but I remember being specifically warned to watch out for iron deficiency, as the milk doesn't provide enough.

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It's a recent thing, yes. Apparently they're finding that infants lack the necessary enzymes to digest most starches and want to discourage mothers from filling babies up with calories they can't get nutrients from.

The iron thing is a subject of debate in some circles as some theorize that breastmilk is low in iron for a reason that is beneficial to babies (some types of less desirable gut bacteria feed on iron, or something like that), so that some think babies are low and need to be supplemented, and some think that babies are low and it's for a reason so don't mess with it. I haven't seen much in the way of studies in the subject, though.

I didn't know any of this and my first was actually completely weaned from milk of any kind by the first birthday for some reasons out of my control. That child did fall behind her normal growth curve before catching up again a while after her first birthday, which is corroborative but also anecdotal and untestable, so whatever. In retrospect, I should have gotten her some formula at least until she was one, but there don't appear to be any long term affects thankfully (she did have delayed speech, but that was probably more related to the circumstances that led to the weaning than her actual diet, if there is any relationship at all).

With my second, I learned more about it because we were dealing with some undiagnosed food sensitivities. I avoided any solids whatsoever until after he was one, and only a very little even then. It was hard, since I hate breastfeeding and what it does to my mental health, but I couldn't trust that he wouldn't react horribly to formula. Raising littles is complicated and it's amazing how much recommendations change over the years.

At my daughter's 1yo appt with the pediatrician, the only nutritional advice we were given was to switch from formula to whole milk and give her approximately 24 oz/day (3 cups, or one at each meal). Other than that, she was allowed to eat everything we were eating. I try to give her a balance of each food group throughout the day.

I can't find any negative health consequences to giving babies formula past 12 months. I think pediatricians advise parents to stop because it's an unnecessary expense and it encourages them to be lazy about introducing solid foods. Honestly, in your post-apocalyptic society, it's more likely that everyone drinks formula since milk is so hard to come by.

That said, you wrote:

But I find myself thinking of matters related to nutrition. Baby Girl, even at a year old, needs her nutrition in a way the other teenage characters don't. So naturally my MC, who is male, worries about her and tries to find ways of supplementing her diet. So I found myself wondering it would be stupid to have him give her vitamins as a means of making up for potential deficiencies.

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The fact of the matter is, if the baby is getting a balanced diet, she doesn't need vitamins. Now, even if she doesn't need them, that doesn't mean your MC wouldn't try to acquire them. After all, he's inexperienced, right? The biggest plothole you run the risk of falling into is making him a "perfect" parent. If he doesn't royally screw up at least once, that is your biggest plausibility problem.