Any advice how to give my baby vitamin drops when she hates the taste!?

[MrsTMT]

Hi,

My DD1 is just over 6mths old and I have recently started giving her vitamin drops as recommended by the HV (as she is breastfed).

Well, she hates the taste of it (orange) and refuses to take it! If I try and persist, the liquid ends up all over her but not in her mouth! I even started using a plastic syringe to squeeze it quickly in her mouth but that only worked twice.

If you have any suggestions how to get her to take it I would be
most grateful!! Or if anyone knows another flavour than orange (I've looked but haven't come across anything else) please let me know.

Many thanks in advance!

:)

we have the same problem and have to distract her lots before shooting it in with a small plastic syringe. We do it just before bathtime, which she loves, and clean her teeth straight away afterwards to take the taste away. She has grudgingly become used to this by 9 months, am hoping it lasts!

When I had to give DD antibiotics at 9mo, mixing it with yoghurt was the only way it was going to happen.
Good luck!

Get the NHS Surestart ones from your local clinic or Children's centre. They're loads cheaper than supermarket ones (they're about £1.80 I think) and don't have any sugar in them - the ones you buy at Boots etc are full of sugar. They're banana flavour and my DS loves them, and the dose is only 5 drops a day so if your baby doesn't like them it's not much to have to mix in yogurt.

my baby was ebf till 9months (now has a bottle or two some days when we feel like it) and not had any vitamin drops, i've not been advised to give the either .

I started DS on abidec drops at 6 months. They come with quite a nice little syringe. DS hated them the first couple of weeks but slowly got used to them. He is now 3 and just takes the dose out of the syringe without a second thought. If you start hiding them now then you will always be hiding them.

I agree that supplementation of most vitamins isn't needed (nor is iron, contrary to Cow and Gate and their "growing up" bollocks) but I would argue that vitamin D is a good idea as most people are deficient in this country - most women's levels are too low and therefore their breastmilk may not have optimal levels.

Supplementary vitamins are not needed if you have a decent diet. They "just make your pee expensive" my mother used to say.Have you started weaning yet? If not, is there a reason?

NewYearEverything/Kiwiinkits, I beg to differ but medical evidence suggests that vitamin supplements are important in the UK. This is particularly true for Vitamin D (due to relatively low levels of sunlight for 6 months of the year). See here for example www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=11935 and here (Scotland considering adding Vitamin D to foodstuffs to reduce rates of MS in the country): www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16255661

That's not to say that a broad and varied diet can't make sure you have sufficient, however evidence suggests that this is difficult enough for many adults and given that most toddlers have very haphazard eating patterns (even if we provide the most nutritious, healthy and varied food onto their plates) and given that the negative effects of insufficient vitamin absorption may not show up until adulthood, it is sensible (and does no harm) to give vitamin drops to be on the safe side.

Adding to milk, yoghurt etc is fine.

Sorry:
Here: www.publicservice.co.uk/news_story.asp?id=11935
and
Here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-16255661

Weirdly I have just been reading our local guidelines on this today. All bf children over 6 months should be taking the healthy start vitamins until the age of 4. Am going to get my poor deprived 2 year old bf son some ASAP!

Hi mrstmt,
My twins are also on vits so I express into a bottle and add the vits. That way the disgusting taste is disguised and you know baby is getting it all.

i took offence that bf children should be having extra vitamins after all the publicity about how breast is best and every bf counts blah blah. vitamin D was about the only thing that persuaded me but i'm not in the higher risk groups (don't live up north or have dark skin) so my kids have gone without. isn't it added to breakfast cereals?

Shouldn't you just take baby outside more, then? Surely it's not THAT miserable in the UK, weatherwise, that you can't take your baby outside for some fresh air? It just doesn't seem healthy to me. Meh, but I'm a kiwi, we do things differently down here. Didn't mean to offend anyone...

It's acutaly not hard to get the required does of Vit D a day hear in the UK. The main concern are those who have dark skin and who don't get out at all and a recent problem is the overuse of sunscean.

You need about 20minutes a day of sunlight on hands and face so you can even manage that in the winnter.

Personaly I've never bothered but we live in the south East and I'm very pail skined so not in a high risk group anyway.

I've always put them in the weetabix/porridge.

The abidec drops taste awful. The haribrorange liquid is better, and we've just started a lemon liquid one but I can't remember the name. Got it at tesco!

I live in Scotland, breastfed and never gave DS vitamins because no-one even mentioned it in those days. He seems to have turned out OK, though he is very fair skinned and we did go out as much as possible.

prem ds had vitamins which I put in his milk until the hospital stopped prescribing them.

I use the sringe and baby got use to it. I'd rather give extra vitamins than not give them personally.

I bought them after being recommended by HV, started to give them, then forgot & they go off so quickly (in fact, too quickly for you to use them all up in the timeframe if u follow the prescribed dosage) so gave up. DD was bf until 9.5mths (stopped due to my illness) & baby-led weaned from 5.5mths. She's now 21mths, eats like a horse & seems very happy & healthy. I don't regret not giving her the vits & would suggest that, if its that much hard work & hiding them in food doesn't work, unless the GP suggests your DD NEEDS them, its not worth it. I think, as with a lot of things regarding baby feeding, the jury is still out on this one...

There was another report on the news this morning about Vitamin D deficiencies across the UK. One third of adults are deficient and half of babies. All pregnant and breastfeeding women should be taking a supplement (I did not know this and am BFing at the moment so will be adding) as well as other risk groups which includes under 3s. Please remember that the advice to take these supplements for at risk groups comes from longitudinal empirical studies and aims to reduce the risks of childhood rickets and other diseases like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, some cancers etc, the impacts of which may not show up until your children are grown adults. It is not based on the 'I didn't give to my child and he's absolutely fine' kind of science. There are also links to mental health and eyesight. Example re mental health here

This is an easy explanation of the Vit D issue.

Fair skinned people need it too probably because you're using suncream and stay out of the sun.

As for the other vits in multivits, they're all good stuff and the main reason that they're advised for young children is that their diets are variable and so its harder to be sure that they're getting enough of what they need on a day-to-day basis. It's equivalent to taking folic acid in pregnancy - which you probably did. Yes, you can get folic acid in your diet, but it is not easily absorbed, a lot of people don't get enough, and research has shown that taking it reduces the risks of spina bifida. And so, generally, we do.

Sorry to witter on about it, but I just don't get why it is that so many people on MN and elsewhere who think that this doesn't apply to them because they feed their children healthy meals. I agree supplements are too expensive for some and perhaps they should be provided to at risk groups on the NHS. FWIW, this isn't a new phenomenon, most of our parents/grandparents generation will remember being given a spoon full of vitamin drops for much of their early childhood. The studies on these things have been going on for a long time.

I agree. And people shouldn't be offended about it implying that breastmilk is not good enough - the only reason why it applies to BF babies only between 6-12 months is that the vitamins are already added to formula, so FF babies are getting them that way. Babies/children of 12 months plus who drink cows' milk rather than formula should have vitamins too.

I have to say I didn't start giving my DS vitamins until he was 12 months (breastfed, still is at 18 months, has not had any formula) because I didn't think they were necessary, but the HV persuaded me at his one year check, and I decided they would be a good idea for him once he started nursery and especially over the winter. He has the lemon syrup one with omega 3 and he loves it, opens his mouth wide when he sees the spoon coming!

abidec drops taste awful, there are other brands, wellkid baby&infant tastes a bit better. For slightly older kids, the chewy pastels are great.... for my older ones, we give them Bassets active teen/young adult, the baby gets Welkid liquid. I find that giving DS a spoonful of food first, dulls the tastebuds to the taste of the vit liquid.

For Vit D and Folic acid and Omega oils (very important for all of us, & Folic acid is not just for preg women!), it is very difficult to get what you need from diet, partly because intensive farming methods mean dietary sources don't contain as much of these things as they would have a few generations ago.

Vit D is prob the most important of all, this far north, but this is not a new story - I supplemented all 4 DS (oldest is now 18 years old) from birth with abidec, and I was quite aware at that time, the UK is too far north (especially here in Scotland) for human habitation (!). There just isn't enough sunlight. The recommended intake of Vit D (5micrograms/day), is probably far, far too low, but enough ward off the most acute problems (ie death).

The traditional spoonful of cod liver oil will give you an abundance if you don't want to take tablets.

I'm fully convinced on the Vit D argument, and my children are given vitamins (even though they are very fair and spend a lot of time outside - I also use a lot of sunscreen on them as we have a strong family history of skin cancer, so I doubt they get anywhere near enough Vit D from sunlight).

The Abidec drops contain Vit D2. As I understand it, there is some debate about the way in which this is processed / way in which our body can use this. I swapped to WellKids as this contains Vit D3, which is the recommended for for vitamin D (the Wellkids drops are also much more comprehensive than Abidec, and contain Iron, which Abidec drops don't).