First Day Vitamins Review: Ingredients, Gaps, and Better Alternatives
First Day sells personalized gummy vitamin packs for women, men, kids, and pregnancy, and the format is genuinely easy to stick with. But gummies have a physical ceiling on what they can hold, so if you're using them as a prenatal, postnatal, or daily vitamins for women, you need to know exactly which nutrients tend to fall short, according to a 2025 analysis of prenatal vitamin products, and how to fill the gap. This review breaks down what gummy vitamins like First Day typically contain, where the format runs into trouble, and what alternatives are worth comparing.
TL;DR: First Day's gummy vitamins are a legitimate, convenient way to take a daily supplement, but the format can't fit enough iron, choline, or DHA for pregnancy or postpartum needs. If you're using one as a prenatal or postnatal, check those three nutrients on the label specifically and add food sources or a standalone supplement where the gummy falls short. For general daily use outside pregnancy, a well-formulated gummy is usually enough on its own.
I've spent years reviewing supplement labels for a wellness brand, and the pattern with gummies is consistent across the category, not unique to any one company. The chewable format can't physically hold enough iron, choline, or DHA to hit adult targets in one or two gummies, so label-reading matters more here than with almost any other supplement type.
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This article is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Prenatal and postnatal nutrition needs vary by individual health history, dietary pattern, and trimester, so consult your doctor, midwife, or OB before starting, stopping, or combining any vitamin regimen, especially during pregnancy or while breastfeeding.
What Is First Day and How Does It Work?
First Day is a subscription vitamin company that ships personalized daily vitamin and supplement packs, typically as gummies, in pre-portioned pouches for each day of the month. Customers fill out an intake quiz covering age, sex, diet, and goals, and the company assembles a pack from its catalog of gummy multivitamins, probiotics, and targeted nutrients like biotin or vitamin D. The company markets packs for women, men, kids, teens, and pregnancy or postpartum stages, and it leans on convenience and taste as its main selling points compared to swallowing several capsules a day.
That convenience is real. Compliance research on vitamins has shown for decades that people take supplements more consistently when they're pleasant to use, and a chewable gummy clears a lower bar than a fistful of capsules. That's a genuine benefit for someone who has never managed to stick with a pill routine, and it shouldn't be dismissed. But convenience and completeness are two different things, and a personalized quiz doesn't change the physical chemistry of what fits inside a gummy. The quiz determines which category of pack you get; it doesn't expand how much iron or choline a single gummy can physically carry.
What's Actually in a Gummy Daily or Prenatal Multivitamin
Most gummy multivitamins, First Day's included as a category example, are built around a base of water-soluble vitamins that are cheap to dose in small amounts and don't clash with gelatin or pectin: vitamin C, the B vitamins, biotin, and folic acid or folate. These vitamins are potent in milligram or microgram amounts, so a manufacturer can hit 100% of the daily value without needing a large gummy.
Fat-soluble vitamins like D and E usually make it in too, since the doses needed are also small. Where gummies start to struggle is with minerals and larger compounds. Calcium, magnesium, iron, iodine, and choline all require gram-scale or high-milligram doses to be clinically useful, and cramming that much material into a two-gram gummy either means the gummy becomes enormous, tastes bad, or the brand simply doses it low and calls it "supportive."
Think of it like packing for a week away using only a lunchbox instead of a suitcase. You can fit the small, light items (a phone charger, sunglasses) without any trouble. But the bulky items (extra shoes, a jacket) either get left behind or get squeezed in halfway, and you end up short exactly where it counts. Gummy vitamin formulation works the same way: the format itself decides what makes the cut, not the intention behind the ingredient list.
Where Gummy Formulas Fall Short
Iron and Anemia Risk in Pregnancy
Iron is the nutrient most often missing or underdosed in gummy prenatals. According to the NIH Office of Dietary Supplements, pregnant women need about 27 mg of iron per day to support the roughly 50% increase in blood volume that occurs during pregnancy and to supply the growing fetus. Iron deficiency in pregnancy is linked to preterm birth and low birthweight, and it's one of the most common nutrient deficiencies among pregnant women worldwide.
Iron also happens to taste strongly metallic and can react with gummy dyes and stabilizers, which is why many gummy prenatals either omit it, dose it at a fraction of the target, or advise you to pair the gummy with a separate iron supplement. If you're relying on a gummy prenatal, check the label for iron content specifically. If it's absent or under roughly 18 mg, ask your OB whether you need a standalone iron supplement, especially if bloodwork shows you're borderline or anemic.
Choline: The Nutrient Most Prenatal Gummies Skip
Choline gets less attention than folate, but it works alongside folate to support neural tube closure and fetal brain development, and the current recommendation from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) is 450 mg per day during pregnancy. A 2025 analysis by Borgelt et al., published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, tested 47 prenatal vitamin products, prescription and nonprescription, and found that only 26% of them even listed choline content on the label. Of the ones that did list it, only 42% actually delivered the amount promised.
That means most prenatal vitamins, gummy or otherwise, aren't a reliable choline source on their own. Fewer than 1 in 10 pregnant women in the US meet the 450 mg recommendation from diet and supplements combined, based on the same body of research the Borgelt team draws on. If choline matters to you, and given its role in fetal brain development it should, look at food sources like eggs, chicken, and soy alongside your prenatal, or ask your provider about a standalone choline supplement.
DHA and Omega-3s: Why Gummies Can't Fit Enough In
DHA, an omega-3 fatty acid, crosses the placenta and concentrates in the fetal brain and retina, particularly in the third trimester. A 2023 clinical recommendation published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology MFM advises that women of childbearing age get at least 250 mg per day of combined DHA and EPA from diet or supplements, with an additional 100 to 200 mg per day of DHA during pregnancy to help reduce the risk of preterm birth.
Gummies almost never carry a meaningful DHA dose. Fish or algal oil has a strong smell and taste that's difficult to mask in a chewable format, and the oil itself doesn't set well in a gummy matrix. So if your prenatal is a gummy, assume you'll need a separate DHA or algal-oil softgel to hit the recommended range, particularly once you're past the first trimester.
Is First Day Safe? Testing and Regulatory Oversight
Dietary supplements, gummy or otherwise, are regulated by the FDA under a different framework than prescription drugs. The FDA does not "approve" vitamins or multivitamins before they go to market the way it approves medications; instead, manufacturers are responsible for ensuring their products are safe and accurately labeled, and the FDA can take enforcement action after the fact if a product is found to be unsafe or mislabeled. So no gummy vitamin brand, First Day included, can accurately claim FDA approval in the same sense a prescription drug can.
That doesn't mean all supplements are equally trustworthy. Third-party testing organizations like NSF, USP, and Informed Choice verify that a product's label matches its actual contents and that it's free of contaminants above a set threshold. When you're comparing gummy vitamin brands, check whether the product carries one of these seals rather than relying on marketing language like "lab tested," which has no standard meaning on its own. If a brand doesn't publish which lab tested a batch or what the results showed, that's worth asking about directly, especially during pregnancy when even trace contaminants carry more weight.
Who Gummy Vitamins Work Well For
Gummy multivitamins are a reasonable fit for people who struggle to swallow pills, kids and teens who need age-appropriate dosing, or adults filling small, predictable nutrient gaps like vitamin D or B12 as part of a generally solid diet. For a healthy adult looking for daily vitamins for women or a basic multivitamin, a well-formulated gummy can genuinely cover the bases, since the doses needed for most vitamins in a non-pregnant adult are modest.
Where gummies get shakier is any life stage with a narrow, high-stakes nutrient target: pregnancy, postpartum recovery, or diagnosed deficiencies like iron-deficiency anemia. In those cases, the margin for error is smaller and the consequences of a shortfall are more serious, so it's worth pairing a gummy with targeted labs and, where needed, a standalone capsule for the nutrient that's running short.
What to Look for in Any Prenatal or Daily Multivitamin
Whether you're evaluating First Day, a shelf brand from GNC or Puritan's Pride, or a capsule-based option, the same five checkpoints apply. First, confirm folate or folic acid content lands at or above 400 mcg for general use, or 600 mcg dietary folate equivalents if you're pregnant. Second, check the iron dose against your actual needs; a menstruating adult needs less than a pregnant one, so more isn't automatically better here, and iron above the tolerable upper limit can cause constipation, nausea, or in rare cases more serious toxicity.
Third, look specifically for choline, since it's the nutrient most likely to be absent even on brands that appear complete. Fourth, check whether DHA is included or whether you'll need a separate source; if you're pregnant or breastfeeding, plan on it being separate unless the label proves otherwise. Fifth, look for a third-party testing seal (NSF, USP, or similar) rather than taking "quality tested" language at face value. Run through those five and you'll catch the gaps that generic marketing copy tends to gloss over, on First Day's products or anyone else's.
Alternatives to First Day
If a gummy format isn't giving you the nutrient profile you need, capsule and softgel-based prenatal and multivitamin lines tend to fit more into each dose because they don't have to solve for taste and chew texture. Brands like Thorne and MaryRuth's publish full nutrient panels including choline and DHA on many of their prenatal formulas, which makes it easier to audit exactly what you're getting before you buy. Rainbow Light and Metagenics both offer whole-food-based multivitamin lines that some people find gentler on the stomach than synthetic formulations, though "gentler" varies by individual and isn't guaranteed.
For budget-conscious shoppers, store and value brands sold through GNC or Puritan's Pride are worth a look too, provided you check the same five criteria above rather than assuming a lower price means a lower-quality formula, or a higher price means a complete one. And if you're specifically shopping postnatal vitamins for the recovery period after birth, look for a formula that keeps iron and vitamin D levels up through breastfeeding, since postpartum needs don't drop off as sharply as some marketing suggests.
None of this means gummies are a bad category or that First Day is cutting corners relative to its competitors; the choline and DHA gaps described earlier show up across nearly every gummy prenatal on the market, First Day's included as one example of the format rather than an outlier. The distinction that actually matters is between gummy and capsule delivery, not between one brand's gummy and another's. If you like the format and the adherence it gives you, keep it, and just close the specific gaps with food or a second, targeted supplement rather than assuming one product should do everything.
For a deeper walkthrough of what a complete prenatal should contain trimester by trimester, see our prenatal vitamins guide. And if folate and folic acid dosing specifically is what you're trying to sort out, our companion piece on multivitamins with folic acid covers how much you actually need at each life stage and how to read a label for it.
For pregnancy and women's wellness, explore our prenatal and mamma collection, or take a closer look at our women's range and organic shatavari.