Vitamin K injection or oral? Need advice

[jenmcn1]

So I'm having baby #3 on May 30th via csection. Based on past history, and out of my control. I am under the care of a midwife and OB. I would love to go all natural home birth but I sadly can't . My DH and I are very natural minded people and raise our children that way. Because I'm having a csection, I'm wanting to avoid any injections etc following the birth. I know that I have the option of oral vitamin K or the injection which is more synthetic based. My midwife says the oral isn't as effective. And I know it takes 8 days for vit k to build up in a babies system. I'm just not sure what is best?!
Any advice? Thank you kindly

 

[MindUtopia]

Me personally, in your situation, I'd get the injection. I've heard that the oral isn't as effective as well and it's something you have to do over the course of several days (which may or may not be something you want to do if you're recovering). My personal feeling was that putting something foreign that wasn't breast milk into the gut was just as unnatural as an injection (we opted for the injection), so I didn't really see a benefit. I'm a medical researcher myself and I actually went and had a look at the studies on vitamin K which claim to link it to leukemia, which tends to be why people don't do it. I wasn't convinced at all by their methodology and their findings just weren't robust or convincing. It wasn't enough to make me feel like it wasn't safe. I didn't think it was necessary either (actually there's a study I saw once that showed that babies with delayed clamping, so who get all their blood back from the placenta at birth, have 'normal' levels of vitamin K), but I wasn't concerned about it from a safety perspective either. If I was to have a c-section though, I'd go for the vitamin K (and probably in the shot to make it easier on myself). The risk of bleeding for babies is usually only if there has been some sort of trauma during birth or infection or a similar birth complication. You will likely have a completely smooth, complication free experience, but because it's major surgery, it does add more risk than a natural birth. In that case, I probably wouldn't want to take the risk, just in case something happened that I wasn't aware of, or infection was introduced in theatre, etc. Have you looked into 'natural' c-sections though? Check out the Birth Without Fear blog. They have some great natural c-section birth plans that I found to be really helpful when I was doing my birth plan. I didn't have a c-section, but I wanted to be prepared and to feel empowered to ask for things to be done in the most natural way possible and there was some great advice there.

 

[pLadyBug]

You always have the third option which is to refuse both. You don't have to have the oral or injectable vitamin K. Doctors will warn you of the possible outcomes which may occur if you do not get it. However they are very rare. If you prefer natural methods then I suggest you increase your intake of Vitamin K from leafy greens or take supplements. That way your baby will get the vitamin k that way. Also as a side note if you breastfeed the baby wont be deficient as it will get all the vitamins needed from you. In the end the choice is yours. I just wanted to give you another perspective to look into. And yes I have refused vitamin k a couple of times with NO problems.

 

[BigLegEmma]

It's something that's become more common with intervention. Jews circumcise at 8 days because the blood doesn't clot well prior to that - how did they know with such accuracy back in Biblical times? Parental intake of Vit K prior to that also has little to no effect on baby's levels both in pregnancy and during breastfeeding before said 8 days - I don't believe God/Nature made a mistake. My preference is to only accept Vit K if I have to have intervention during birth that leads to some kind of physical trauma, otherwise, we will do without. If I had to make a choice, we'd do oral intake, but I don't know where to get it in this country and the hospital I'm under just do the injection. They're going to hate me. Spain is very procedure-based when it comes to medical care and childbirth is no different to any other medical emergency, so they're not impressed with all my spanner throwing. It's getting better, though; the new teaching hospital I'm at here is much more open to naturalising birth, but I think it's a bit more progressive than the mainland. As a pp wrote, if I need a C-section or assisted delivery, then I will agree to the injection, but if I get my natural, unmedicated birth, we'll do without.

 

[MummyToAmberx]

Think mine have had it oral. x

 

[pLadyBug]

It's something that's become more common with intervention. Jews circumcise at 8 days because the blood doesn't clot well prior to that - how did they know with such accuracy back in Biblical times? Parental intake of Vit K prior to that also has little to no effect on baby's levels both in pregnancy and during breastfeeding before said 8 days - I don't believe God/Nature made a mistake. My preference is to only accept Vit K if I have to have intervention during birth that leads to some kind of physical trauma, otherwise, we will do without. If I had to make a choice, we'd do oral intake, but I don't know where to get it in this country and the hospital I'm under just do the injection. They're going to hate me. Spain is very procedure-based when it comes to medical care and childbirth is no different to any other medical emergency, so they're not impressed with all my spanner throwing. It's getting better, though; the new teaching hospital I'm at here is much more open to naturalising birth, but I think it's a bit more progressive than the mainland. As a pp wrote, if I need a C-section or assisted delivery, then I will agree to the injection, but if I get my natural, unmedicated birth, we'll do without.

Are you a Jew? Where does your research as far as parental intake of Vit k prior to 8 days being ineffective come from or that being the reason Jews circumcise on the 8th day for that matter?

 

[BigLegEmma]

Are you a Jew? Where does your research as far as parental intake of Vit k prior to 8 days being ineffective come from or that being the reason Jews circumcise on the 8th day for that matter?

Messianic, but do I need to be Jewish to be informed about ancient texts and biological processes? Prothrombin too is low until 8th day. I went to a Jewish school until university and read apologetics for fun but neither of those factors matter a jot.

"It hardly seems accidental that the rite of circumcision was postponed until the eighth day by the Mosaic law."
- Dr. Armand J. Quick, author

But I come to this forum to talk babies; if you would like in-depth, long-winded discussions on Leviticus and other books of Torah, I can point you to a relevant source, but my baby's due in 3 days and I have more pressing matters to attend to.

 

[jenmcn1]

Thank you ladies! So appreciate your advice. My midwife ha encouraged me to go with the injection since it's more effective.
So I think we'll be doing that.

There was a baby boy in Canada just recently, that was circumsized before 8 days old and hadn't received the bit k shot or oral vit k and died I know this is rare, but just don't want to chance it.

 

[pinkpassion]

There were also some babies in Tennessee recently that died from hemorrhaging and the parents had declined the vit k shot.. just fyi

 

[Torsornin]

I did some reading up on this, and after reading some peer reviewed journal articles I decided that the inj was the way to go, esp as babies that are exclusively breast fed dont really get the vit K. The oral isnt quite as effective, you have to do multiple doses, and often the extra doses fall through the cracks and get missed.