question about vitamin K

[tenar]

I have a question about vitamin K.

We would like our baby to have vitamin K after birth.

But I am confused about the benefits of having it given orally as opposed to an injection.

OK, injections are bad. But so is having a nasty bad taste in your mouth. It seems to me that this might mess up with baby's taste and sense of smell and therefore with her ability to breastfeed right away.

What do you think? Am I missing something here?

Thanks!

Edit: mods, I realised right after posting (typical) that this should be in the "3rd and 4th stage" board. Please move it there, if you don't mind. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[Trillian]

I'll just move it to the vaccination information and research forum for you

[Trillian]

I'm not sure how much it would mess up their sense of taste or smell etc, but I think the biggest risk of the oral vaccine as opposed to the injection is that they can bring it up again if they posset, and in that case they would not get the full effect of the vaccine and they can't have it again JIC. So for that reason I would go for the needle, especially if you are adamant you want bubs to have it. You can minimise the 'trauma' they experience if you are BF bubs at the time it is done.

Also some hospitals don't carry the oral vaccine, so it's something you would have to ask them beforehand JIC they don't have it

[tenar]

Thanks very much Trillian.

I hadn't thought of the possibility that baby might not keep it down. That just shows how much of a newbie with babies I am, doesn't it...)

[Trillian]

Don't worry about it, it's something that you wouldn't immediately consider, but even when they are older and have oral doses for some of their vaccinations, they can posset those too and they can't have them again. My youngest threw up his second dose of Rotarix (rotavirus vaccine) within moments of having it and I was secretly pleased because he'd had such a bad reaction to the first one that they sort of talked me into the second lot.

[scarlet121]

From my understanding you take the oral drops and this is then passed into breast milk and your child gets it. If your child is going to be taking formula then it will have vitamin K in it.

The reason people do this is because the injection is something like 10,000 times the dose actually needed, this can be an overload to some children's kidneys resulting in jaundice for one.

There is also a lot of controversy as to whether it is needed as what it is going to help is hemoragic fever (I know the spelling is wrong) which is really rare, and a lot of people say that the shot isn't worth the very low risk of the disease.

I am pregnant now and will be doing the drops, my second child has been very ill, so I am just going to do things a little different.