Nutrients For You When Breastfeeding

Your Nutrition This Month

As breastfeeding mums, your diet and how you nourish your body matter.¹ If you are breastfeeding, here are the essential vitamins and minerals you need:

Diet For Your 10-Month-Old Baby

What Can Your Baby Eat This Month?

Breastmilk is a vital source of nourishment for your baby at this stage.

New Food Choices

Your 10-month-old baby needs the right nutrients to maintain her health as she continues to grow and develop. If you’d like to introduce new foods, here are some to consider:

• Soft pasteurised cheese, yogurt, cottage cheese.
• Iron-fortified cereals made from rice, barley, wheat, or oats.
• Fruit cut into cubes or strips, or mashed.
• Bite-size, soft-cooked vegetables like peas and carrots.
• Combo foods including macaroni and cheese or casseroles.
• Protein such as eggs, pureed or finely ground meats, poultry, boneless fish, tofu, or well-cooked and mashed beans.
• Finger foods like lightly toasted bread or bagels, small pieces of ripe banana, spiral pasta, teething crackers, or low-sugar, O-shaped cereal.

Engaging Your 10-Month-Old Baby

At this point, you can interact in an even more complex and creative way with your baby. Activities such as chatting with and singing to your baby are still effective.

You can also try these tips:

• Buy puppets or make them from old mittens or socks by drawing faces with marking pens. To help increase your baby’s language skills, make the puppet talk to your baby and encourage him to talk back.
• Cut out pictures of things such as a ball, animals, and other familiar objects from magazines and paste them in a scrapbook. Look at this scrapbook together and help him point to the pictures as you name them.
• Sing familiar songs and read nursery rhymes.

Dealing With Fears

Aside from stranger fear and separation anxiety, your baby’s further awareness of the bigger world may cause him to fear situations that never bothered him before. For instance, everyday things such as darkness, thunder, and the vacuum cleaner may become mini-monsters, and inspire sudden tears.

Easing Separation Anxiety

Continuing separation anxiety and fear of strangers are signs that your baby has a healthy relationship with you.

Your 10-Month-Old Baby’s Development

All babies develop at different rates. You should not be concerned if your baby does something later or earlier than your friends’ children. In general, by the end of your baby’s tenth month, she will likely be able to do the following:

• Walk with you while holding hands.
• Say “mama” and “dada” and know what they mean.
• Stand while holding on to someone or something.
• Protest if you take a toy away.
• Play hand games and wave bye-bye.

Don’t Make Comparisons
You shouldn’t be concerned if your baby does something later or earlier than your friend’s children. Children learn best and build confidence when you let them learn at their own pace, but if you’re truly concerned, check with your paediatrician.

References:
¹ HealthHub. n.d. Early Childhood Nutrition. Available at https://www.healthhub.sg/programmes/122/early-nutrition-for-babies#months-0-3-before-the-arrival-for-your-baby
² Building Baby’s Immunity: It All Starts In The Gut, Abbott Family. Available at https://abbottfamily.com.sg/articles/science/building-baby-immunity
³ Diet for Breastfeeding Mothers, Abbott Family. Available at https://abbottfamily.com.sg/articles/nutrition/diet-for-breastfeeding-mothers

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