Vitamin K controversy?

by Jennifer Jordan (Subscribe to Jennifer Jordan's posts) Apr 10th 2008 7:45PM

Categories: Newborns, Pregnancy & Birth, Safety, Development, Playground Bureau, Environment

Someone asked blog site Babble the other day a question that has been humming around in my mind like a lost hummingbird for a long time: What is the deal with the vitamin K shots given to newborns, and are they really necessary?

I remember when Mr. Pickles was born. it was truly the most defining, glorious moment of my life. I couldn't see him, but I could hear him. Then, magically, he was whisked over to a table behind me where they cleaned him up, gave him a shot of vitamin K and then put some drops in his eyes before attaching that cute little hat to his head and passing him over to me.

I know this because they told me what they were going to do as they were doing it. I had no advance notice this child would receive a vitamin K shot, nor did I know what it was for. Nor did I know I might have had an opinion about whether or not he received one.

In many states, vitamin K shots are a legal requirement. Babble's answer was that it might be possible to locate a care provider who would allow oral dosage to mother and child, but advised it was unlikely to find one who would forego the shot all together.

Some feel there is a connection between the vitamin K shots and an increased risk for childhood leukemia. However, that said, no studies have been able to confirm such a connection. Newborns are given shots of vitamin K to decrease the risk of side effects from being born without enough of it in the system--lack of vitamin K can lead to an inability for blood clotting.

I think it's worth asking health care professionals about vitamin K, whether or not we have a choice in if our infants receive shots of it. Information is power, and there may be an alternative. Also, if there is concern, it can be addressed before you're in the middle of giving birth, when you clearly have other things on which you should be concentrating!

I don't think it's a good policy to just accept blindly what is being given to us and our children (both born and unborn). Rather, we should ask questions, get the facts, and make sure we're informed whenever possible.

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Comments (31)

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

Rachel 4-10-2008 @ 8:12PM

Neither of my babies received Vitamin K after the birth.
First was a homebirth, second was a hospital birth.
You can get waivers for pretty much everything that is "legally required".

Jenn 4-10-2008 @ 8:12PM

That's funny.....I did a lot of reading (as I'm sure you did too!) about pregnancy, giving birth, and what was going to happen to both me and baby at the time of birth, and the Vitamin K shot was listed very clearly as one of the things given to the baby. And I don't remember ever hearing of any controversy about it, until now. I'm sure there must have been, because surely the people who refuse immunizations would be up in arms about this too, but I while I definitely heard about the immunizations I don't recall ever seeing the inclusion of the Vitamin K shot.

eugene 4-10-2008 @ 9:01PM

This is new to me as well.

The only new thing I've heard is that some hospitals are leaving the vernix on. My friend's newborn was that way and she's acne free.

mamaloo 4-10-2008 @ 9:30PM

Want a controversial newborn protocol? How about the Erythromycin. Know why it's used? To prevent a gonorrhea infection in baby's eyes. That's it.

ikate 4-10-2008 @ 10:45PM

I declined both the eye drops and the K at my daughter's birth. My midwife did make me get tested for gonorrhea beforehand but it was no big deal. And I think I recall that the K is for blood clotting? Either way, she got neither and did just fine.

eugene 4-10-2008 @ 10:20PM

yeah, because blindness and blood infections are so fun right?

Gonorrhea is a pretty common STD... from the CDC:
Gonorrhea is a very common infectious disease. CDC estimates that more than 700,000 persons in the U.S. get new gonorrheal infections each year. Only about half of these infections are reported to CDC. In 2006, 358,366 cases of gonorrhea were reported to CDC. In the period from 1975 to 1997, the national gonorrhea rate declined, following the implementation of the national gonorrhea control program in the mid-1970s. After several years of stable gonorrhea rates, however, the national gonorrhea rate increased for the second consecutive year. In 2006, the rate of reported gonorrheal infections was 120.9 per 100,000 persons.

Meagan 4-11-2008 @ 11:08AM

Right and if the mom is one of those who has Gonorrhea obviously she should get the drops. But how hard is it to just test for that? Or is there some question of how effective the test is? I don't get why this would be a universal policy for all babies.

mamaloo 4-11-2008 @ 1:18PM

Yes, and when most women do their prenatal pap and blood tests, gonorrhea is one of the diseases tested for.

Is the automatic and routine application Erythromycin warranted in all newborns? I tend to think no, but that's just because I like to think for myself and participate in my (and my family's) medical care.

mamaloo 4-11-2008 @ 1:18PM

eugene 4-11-2008 @ 2:14PM

Meh. I understand parents all feel like they're special and they're well informed and what not... but parents lie to doctors and to each other, tests can be wrong and hospitals in general are hot beds for infections.

So what exactly is the problem here with giving new borns these drops? The drops protect the babies eyes from potential blindness from infection and it protects the doctors, nurses and hospital from sue happy parents who want to blame *somebody* when/if something tragic happens to their baby.

What I find laughable are the parents who cry and moan over the statisically laughable correlation between vaccines and autism and then turn around cry and moan about preventative measures which have little risk of side effects (side effects which are treatable) but have very real positive benefits. The double standard is laughable and for me shows not enlightened, well informed parents, but rather a group of people who have a knee jerk reaction against modern science and rational thought.

SKL 4-11-2008 @ 5:04PM

Eugene, we've noticed you have a knee-jerk reaction against parents thinking for themselves. Or maybe it has nothing to do with your knee but more to do with being a jerk.

I am glad there are still some people in this country who think informed parenting is a good thing.

mamaloo 4-14-2008 @ 6:54PM

Uh, is that your personal pet peeve or something, because the last time I checked the discussion was about newborn procedures.

You might want to grind your axe when a post about autism or vaccines comes up.

And, just in case your knee was jerking at me, we vaccinate and have a lot of faith in vaccinations.

bremarie03 4-10-2008 @ 10:52PM

Doesn't seem like there's anything uncontroversial left anymore.

SKL 4-10-2008 @ 11:08PM

Without getting into the appropriateness of any particular procedure, I find it outrageous that doctors perform so many procedures without involving the parent in the decision, or even informing them in advance.

It should be standard practice to provide all the information well in advance, and if the parent wants to say "do what you think is right, doc, I trust you absolutely," then fine. But there are many, many parents who feel that it's their personal responsibility to decide what should and shouldn't go into their child's bloodstream.

Personally, I think the current "standard practices" cause many parents to fear hospital births and various aspects of well-child care.

I've heard the argument that the docs might get sued if they allowed a parent to make an "informed" decision and they later get sued when the parent says they weren't informed enough and their kid had some problem. While I acknowledge that docs have reason to fear lawsuits, I have to believe that if they took the time to explain things and get the right kind of acknowledgement from the parent, this concern could be mitigated. But then, I think docs really don't want to bother to take the time. Generally, they don't get paid extra for the time it takes to actually talk to clients, so it's easier to just intimidate them into feeling too ignorant to have any input.

I don't know about others, but I feel extremely strongly about making medical decisions for my kids. I am just as smart and educated as most doctors, and I have a lot more concern for my individual child, and knowledge of our personal history (e.g., whether there should be any concern about my having gonorrhea). Furthermore, I've had (and heard about) too many bad experiences with careless / uninformed / disrespectful doctors for me to ever trust one absolutely.

Many folks probably think that if a procedure is standard practice, it must be safe and in the child's best interest. But time and again, this is disproven. Forceps, episiotomies, shaving the pubic area, enemas, prone or butt-up birth position, scrubbing the baby immediately after birth, ether, unnecessary C-sections, etc., etc. Why would we believe that now, at last, the docs are finally right about everything? Tomorrow we will hear about yet another thing that they shouldn't have been doing during today's childbirths. I think women should be able to check with their intuition, knowledge, and experience when it comes to allowing invasive procedures to be done to their children.

I also feel that it would make more sense to screen for problems than to treat every single baby because they might have a problem. Maybe it would cost more or take more time, but why should a perfectly healthy child undergo an unnecessary injection / chemical treatment? At least parents should have the option of screening (before or at birth) if they prefer to go that route.

Natasha 4-11-2008 @ 5:55AM

In the UK you can specify whether or not you want the Vitamin K administered by injection or not (not sure if you can opt out entirely). I chose to administer it orally after the birth and the hospital gave me the second dose to take home and administer a certain time after the birth. However I don't think many mothers know about this option, and I had to remind the hospital about needing the second dose, so I don't think it happens often.

pbhj 4-11-2008 @ 9:13PM

J was born in 2005.

We chose oral Vit.K too as his first experience of life being an injection seemed plain wrong. I think we were told about having a follow-on dose but I can't recall if he had it or not. It was definitely presented as something we could opt out of, but we did have to say in the delivery room that we wanted it orally - there was no record that the nurses were following.

My wife didn't have the shots initially to help deliver the placenta as we were trying to limit the drugs passed on to J (in milk) but the placenta delivery was almost as hard as the birth and in retrospect it was probably a bad decision.

jen 4-11-2008 @ 4:18AM

In the UK we are sliding slowly but surely over to the over-medicalised US birth, which upsets me greatly. But at least - area-dependent - get some say in the Vitamin K. In our area, the standard is to give babies a shot as soon as they are born, but you can opt for Oral Vitamin K, which I did. They do give you information about the possible link with leukemia, but the jury is still out on that and the evidence not conclusive.

We don't do the eye drops here though. I hadn't heard about that - not sure I would agree to it, either.

We also have the option in some hospitals of having a test at 36 weeks for something called Group B Strep, which a large percentage of people test positive for (it is symptomless). During its descent through the birth canal, the baby can contract this, and it is a significant contributing factor to infant meningitis in the first few weeks of life. It is hard to spot, and difficult to treat in time. Alternatively, you can have IV antibiotics during labour, which has been shown to reduce the risk to the baby considerably. Again, this is optional, but recommended. There has been a big drive in the UK to get this tested as a matter of course.

All very well. But they won't let you have a waterbirth if you are GroupB positive. And I was tested during my first pregnancy against my consent, and therefore wasn't allowed a birthing pool.... and in the end had to resort to an epidural, and ended up with an emergency C section as my son reacted badly to the drugs. What's to say that if I had been allowed a pool birth, things would have gone a lot better?

It is great that medical science can prevent tragic illnesses such as meningitis, and pre-treat clotting disorders. But the more we intervene, the less chance we have of a 'standard', normal birth, and a greater chance of possible unseen issues further down the line. It's a difficult decision.

Keri 4-11-2008 @ 8:23AM

My son was born at home and my midwife presented the Vitamin K as an option. My husband and I decided to go for it because the oral drops were available. If the shot was our only option, I would have declined it.

Karen 4-11-2008 @ 11:06AM

What are the objections to the shot over the oral dose?

Keri 4-11-2008 @ 12:53PM

Karen, the reason we didn't want the shot is because we had wanted our baby to come into this world peacefully, without the terrifying and painful procedures that are usually done on newborns (cord clamped and cut before it has a chance to stop pulsing, shots, eyedrops, bath, etc).

I agree with Megan that the cord should be left alone until it stops pulsing. It took 20 minutes before my son's cord stopped pulsing. The benefits go to both the baby and mother: baby get nutrients from the cord blood and mother bleeds less from the birth.

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