Saturday, March 27, 2010

Vitamin K Shot Article

When I find sites that I want to link to, they stay in my browser until I get to them. Eventually I have so many tabs open that I can't fit any more into my screen, and so I have to post! Here is one of them:

The Dark Side of the Routine Newborn Vitamin K Shot


I am not a fan of the vitamin K shot. To say that God/nature has made all babies vitamin K deficient and therefore all babies need vitamin K supplementation really seems a bit silly. If babies are "low" in vitamin K, then they are low for a reason. It's like cord clamping - if the cord needed to clamp sooner, it would do so naturally. It seems more reasonable to say: "Babies have lower vitamin K levels than adults. In some cases, vitamin K supplementation is used when necessary."

However, this is not one of my specialty areas of knowledge - input is welcome!

We refused the vitamin K shot with both babies. Our midwife told us that she recommends the shot only in case of a traumatic birth, when it might be necessary (and we agreed that we would go with the shot in that case).

Thoughts, anyone? Civil discourse is always welcome!

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