Did I risk my daughter‘s development ?

[MumOct2017]

Hey there,

I am feeling quite devasted at the moment and hope there is someone out there, who can put my mind at ease.

My precious daughter is 9 months old. I exclusively breastfed her until she was 6 months old. She suffered from really bad colics for 5 months and her poop often looked green and watery. It was said to us: all colours and all consistencies are normal. And the colics result from an immature digestive system. I tried everything- massaging, natural remedies, block feeding... nothing worked. Her weight gain was not great, but tolerable. And as she grew fast in height, we figured, she was just tall and lean. Her gross motor skills developped a bit slowly: rolling from back to belly at 7 months, rolling from belly to back and army crawling at 8 months, sitting up at 9 months, starting to crawl at 9 months.

When she was 6 months I came across the information, to watch for an increased intake of iodine while breastfeeding and that a iodine deficiency could lead to brain damage.

Up until then I had never heard of it. Instead, by accident, I had been using uniodized salt for months and hadn’t been taking any supplements at all. Plus, I consume organic dairy products, which contain significanty less idodine. To help my little one with her tummy aches I even cut out dairy (source of iodine) for weeks and switched to soy-products, which -as I read-additionally block iodine processing in the body. Not much fish either.... I felt like being caught in a nightmare from one second to another and am so, so worried....

I started a iodine-rich diet plus taking a supplement. It took a few weeks and then, all of the sudden and without any change in nursing habits- my milk supply went WAY up. Nursing is a very different process now. No more fussing, longer nursing, much more weight gain... I am growing a ton of baby hair around my hair line... and it scares me. Makes me feel like I truly was iodine-deficient and risking my childs future:-(. Plus I feel like I starved her, as she would have put on more weight in case I had had more milk. And I now read green stool can be hunger-related....

Her doctor thinks she is fine. 9 days after integrating iodine into my system I had a blood test run on her- her thyroid levels were completely normal. The doctor told me not to worry, but I do. And, as said, I also link her digestive problems of her first 5 months to my low milk supply, which I just wasn‘t aware of. I thought, I had enough. I simply trusted. Even when my period started to come back from very early on and took place regularly, I did not question my milk supply. I had read it can happen and that if nursing on demand, everything is okay and baby gets what it needs. I also thought, her short drinking and fussing at the breast might just be due to her lack of patience, her tummy ache. I feel so horrible now....

Concretely speaking, my biggest fear is: I was malnourished, which lead to not enough and qualitatively not good enough milk, which is why my daughter might have been harmed in any way. I blame myself and feel awful for not realizing, that something was wrong.

Otherwise my daughter is fine. She starts crawling, she babbles a lot, she is attached to us and plays. So far no waving or clapping. She has two teeth and is tall for her age and she is now climbing up the percentile curves weight-wise. No more digestive problems either.

Is there anyone that has been in a similar situation and can help me regain my peace? Anyone who breastfed their baby and did not use iodized salt, no supplements plus organic or no milk products (especially this combination, which means very little iodine-intake). And whose baby still turned out just fine? Anyone who did not have massive milk supply, but it went all okay? Or a lot of green poop plus colic for a long time? It may sound like I didn‘t care, but I did so, so much. Wanted to give her the very best even though nursing sometimes was not always easy . I spent a huge amount of money at a chiropracter‘s office as I so badly wanted for her to recover from her colics. And I feel, I missed what was most important. I thought breastmilk was always perfect... I now feel like a bad mom and it hurts so much.

I would be unbelievably grateful for a calming reply.

Thank you for reading all this and sorry if it is a bit chaotic. I am just so emotional these days....

She'll be fine. Stop panicking.
Never heard of ionised salts, and I breastfed three, and took no extra vitamins etc. Don't particularly have a good diet myself either.

If you were short, it would be you who was low as the body produces the breastmilk before it takes what is needed for you.

She is not behind on developing, and is still well within normal ranges.

The best thing you can do is:

1. Not believe everything you read on the internet.
2. Enjoy her and believe in yourself that you are the best mum for her.

It’s so easy to worry about things like this but 99% of the population will have never thought about their iodine intakes and if the dr is happy, you should try and accept that

Also, you’ve done really well to feed for as long as you have done so don’t let this dent your confidence. If it helps, I think you’d have also known if your baby was not getting enough. Mine had big problems feeding and I had to stop breastfeeding quite early on as it wasn’t working and she was failing to thrive. When she was hungry she was very distressed for brief moments but really she was very sleepy and lethargic, not getting wet nappies etc and didn’t have the energy to feed properly. She quite frankly didn’t have the energy to cry like a colicy baby does.

There is a lot of evidence that iodine deficiency in pregnancy and breastfeeding adversely affects IQ in children, but there's no way of knowing if your DC is affected.

You'll never know what her attainment would have been if you had consumed sufficient iodine so I'd suggest just letting it go and being more aware in any future pregnancies.

Given the significant effects of iodine deficiency, I'm always really surprised that more isn't made of it in pregnancy - we are all super aware of the benefits of Folic Acid, but largely unaware of the impact of iodine deficiency.

I’m sorry you’re feeling so worried. Truthfully, I don’t know much about iodine deficiency. However, I breastfed a baby who dropped three centiles for weight, had lots of green poo, vomited constantly and was generally miserable. Like you I was reassured that this was all non-specific and “maybe he’s just meant to be skinny”(!). I actually ended up supplementing with formula at 3 months, then desperately trying to increase my milk supply by feeding all the time, eating loads myself etc. By 5.5 months I’d upped my supply and he was exclusively breastfed again. He gradually put on weight and is now on the 75th centile of weight having been on the 2nd at one point! Clearly he had been malnourished. I worried myself sick that I’d harmed him in some way.

He’s now 2 and though obviously I’m biased, he is clearly fairly bright - speaking in full and quite complex sentences, big vocabulary, recognises some written words, can count and recognise most of the letters of the alphabet.

I appreciate this is anecdote and what you want is data. But maybe a bit of reassurance that you haven’t done anything so unusual or awful will help. There must be many many mothers who have had a similar experience to us. I personally know of 3 in my immediate circle of “Mum” friends who had feeding/weight issues with their babies.

As the previous poster says, you will never know whether your daughter’s cognitive function has been affected by her iodine consumption. Having done a bit of reading (inspired by your post) it seems this is potentially a very widespread problem - you’ve probably already read the CDC guideline but it references a study of “healthy” mums, many of whom were found to be iodine deficient, but hadn’t known till it was tested for. In the UK it’s just not looked for so there could be a big proportion of the population that has it and just doesn’t know. I’m educated and science-literate but I hadn’t even heard of this as an issue until I read your post!

This is going to sound flippant, but I think you should just forget it. The doctor has said it’s ok. Don’t read any more and just let it go. How is your mood in general? I have bad anxiety and had PND and a sign of my deteriorating mental health is a tendency to read obsessively about “issues” like this and torture myself with what ifs. But it’s pointless, honestly.

You didn’t do anything wrong. We make millions of tiny choices as parents, any one of which may subtly change the course of our children’s lives, often unknown to us (do I feed my son enough vegetables? Should I let him have red meat if it’s known this increases cancer risk? Should I ban all sweet treats in case they harm his teeth? Should he watch less TV?). You couldn’t be a parent if you dwelt on every little thing - I have a tendency to do this but it just doesn’t help.

Sorry this is so long but I really felt for you when I read your post.

Hi, just wanted to say that I too had a similar worry but now I can't even remember if it was during pregnancy or after. I'm from Sweden and salt is always (I think) ionidized there and when I realised the salt I was using here didn't have any iodine I panicked a little. Same about the folic acid tbh, I had heard about it before but I started taking it a bit late and I worried so much about possible spina bifida (after having watched Call the midwife). Now I've totally forgotten about these things and have other things that I worry about (baby is 17 months old). My point is: try not to worry! You're on an organic diet which is great ( I also worry about not eating/giving baby enough organic veg), and no one's perfect. Your baby is most likely totally fine!

Dont worry.. go on what you know now.. dd is developing well and healthy.

I bf for 15 months, never heard of thinking about iodine levels. There's always the what if factor but you'll never know.. and the are so many factors when they're tiny that impact. If the cure for colic and sleep issues was more iodine I'm sure word would have got round by now.

Just remember you have a healthy developing little girl..

Don't overthink and stop panicking. She is doing fine.