VITAMIN K injection

[Urban Ayisha]

What are people thinking about the vitamin k injection that they say your baby needs as soon as its born? pros and cons?

[gigglybug]

I opted against it and my LO had the oral dose. The midwife forget to give it to her, until I reminded her (much apologising by midwife!) I think as long as you make sure she gets it, the oral is fine, I didn't like the idea of the injection. If you have to formula feed it contains Vit K anyway.

[MrsD'ville mkII]

Hi. DD had the low oral dose for several weeks. It was a doddle to give it to her and as I recall it was once a week for six weeks or something. We plan to do the same with Brian.

[Annpan]

Can anyone explain why you go for oral instead of injection? E had the injection, within minutes I think.

[gigglybug]

I just didn't want my LO to have an injection, no other reason

[MrsD'ville mkII]

Me too, was just soppiness on our part!

[barefootlinzi]

its also because with the jab the whole dose is given at once (which some people think is too much so soon after birth) but with the oral it is given gradually

[starchild]

we didn't have any vit K :)b

[lsm1066]

Ah! Maternity. My specialist subject.

Some time back the Vit K injection was linked to infant leukemia, so people opted for the oral dose instead. If you formula feed, Vit K is already in the formula, so your baby only has one or two doses. However, if you breastfeed, your baby isn't necessarily getting "enough" Vit K and so more doses are given. And of course, babies spit half of it straight back at you. As far as I know, the link was never conclusively proved.

My kids didn't have Vit K at all. On my birth plan, I put that if I had a prolonged second stage or an operative or assisted delivery (caesarean, forceps or ventouse) then they should have it. Otherwise, absolutely not. My reasons were nothing to do with the potential link to leukemia but simply that nature usually gets things pretty right, so babies must be born with low levels of a blood clotting agent for a reason.

Let's look at why Vit K is given. There is a rare condition called Haemorhagic Disease of the Newborn (HDN). Basically, due to low levels of clotting factors in the blood, bleeding can occur in various sites including the brain. This is most often found in babies who've had any kind of birth where head "trauma" is involved, such as ventouse or forceps delivery, or a prolonged second (pushing) stage of labour. According to the paediatric consultant I worked with on patient information about Vit K, it is also most common in Afro-Caribbean populations. His estimation of the risk of a baby having HDN was this.

"Whether it is because we now give Vit K I don't know. But HDN is so rare that it is highly unlikely that I will ever see a case of it in my entire career". He was 35 at the time, so had quite a long career ahead of him. Current UK statistics are that it occurs in 8.6 per 100,000 births. That's 0.000086% of all live births in the UK.

The thing about Vit K is that if your baby doesn't have it and they develop HDN, they can be given it as the first line of treatment. If they've already had it and they get HDN, then treatment continues in a different way. Treatment of HDN with Vitamin K is nearly always successful. Ultimately, the choice is yours. But when you make your choice, put it in your birth plan and make sure everyone who looks after you during labour sees it. I say this only because when my ds1 was born his heart rate had dipped to 70 bpm. So he was taken out of the room for oxygen (no-one told us where he was going, why he was going, or asked if dh wanted to go with him). When I got our discharge notes, it stated that he had been given Vit K by injection. When I queried it, they said that he had been given it during resuss, which was without our consent.

Hope that helps.

Lynne

[MrsD'ville mkII]

That's really interesting and very informative, thank you

[citizentwiglet]

Ellis also had the injection without my consent. I have a thrombophilic genetic disorder called Factor V Leiden and, although I wasn't entirely against the idea of the vitamin K jab per se, I wanted the haemotologist to check Ellis' platelet count before making a decision, in case I had passed the disorder onto him.
The haemo did check him out three days after he was born, and the results came back fine. I then gave my consent for it to be given, to be told he had already received it. They had given it to him whilst I'd been in the shower! I was furious.

[MrsD'ville mkII]

They had given it to him whilst I'd been in the shower! I was furious.

That's really quite shocking, I would have been furious too, especially with all those extra protective hormones flying about. Did you get an apology or an explanation or anything?

[citizentwiglet]

Their explanation was a shrug of 'Well, he hadn't had it, and not having it can be very bad you know'. It was at that point I knew I was just being bullied by one particular midwife (very long story) and decided that we were discharging ourselves. Never got round to discharging ourselves in a fit of pique though, as the doctor decided we were both fit to go home about 10 minutes later, so I didn't get a chance to strop.

[lsm1066]

Yes, fascinating how you're fit for discharge when you have something to complain about isn't it? I never got an apology either. Just an "oh well, he seems fine" from the discharging midwife.

Interestingly, when we came up from delivery suite, my name was on the board with "caesarean" next to it. Apparently they'd decided that my labour wasn't going the way they wanted it to so they assumed I'd just have a section. Apparently 22 hours of contractions that do nothing followed by 3 hours to the end of 3rd stage isn't normal. Who knew? lol

Lynne

[citizentwiglet]

Yes, fascinating how you're fit for discharge when you have something to complain about isn't it?
Lynne

You know, I'd never thought of it like that before.....another thing that happened with the hound of a midwife was some rather insensitive comments written in my white ante-natal/birth book (all written by the same midwife, incidently) along the lines of 'Mum is panicking AGAIN' (my son was refusing to breastfeed), 'Mum grumpy at being woken up' (mum was awake and attached to a breastpump between the hours of 11pm and 4am Monday morning, having had no sleep since waking up in labour at 7.00am on the Saturday, and had dared to drift off to sleep), 'Mum too busy moaning to bother trying to breastfeed successfully'....funnily enough, when I tried to register my complaint, the book has 'gone missing'. Mmmm.
She'd better not be there when I'm admitted in November - I'm helluva lot bolshier these days!