If breast feeding for longer than 6 months do you need to supplement with vitamin drops?

[compo]

?

no!

No you dont.

no and not sure they can be absorbed into the body anyway. just make sure your diet is okay and introduce dc to wide range of tasty food.

I knew my friend's health visitor was talking rubbish!

Really? Because my GP said after 6 months they start to need more iron. My ds isn't going for food at all really, so now I wonder if there are iron supplements he should take?

has anyone got a link to anything that I could email her so she can tell her health visitor? some sort of evidence?

No-one told me to add drops and I haven't . DS is fine - he gets plenty of vitamins from milk and food.

I think dept of health says that you should give vitamins if bf past 6 months.

However, it seems utterly bizarre to me and I bf to 13 months with no supplements.

I was told this too.
I was told that if I wasn't giving formula (which is supplementted with vitamins and iron) then I'd need to give vitamin drops in caseshe didn't get everything she needed from food

You can always lie to the HV

the department of health says so?
Oh , in that case the hv must be right then.

Think is is outdated advice, no one is sure about the iron levels in breastmilk, they start to depete from between 6-12 months. But if your LO is eating other things then you shoudl be fine without. Didnt bother with DS1 and he is very healthy.

i don't think the drops have iron in them. just A, C and D. vit a and c you can get from all early baby food. vit d is the issue paricularly this summer. .

This is standard advice and the HV has not got it wrong. We have discussed this several times on MN and the archives will reveal a few threads.

Nothing to do with iron.

It's Vitamin D that's the concern, especially for mothers of babies who have dark skins and/or do not get outside much with their babies.

The Vit D is already added to the formula.

Most breastfed babies do not need extra supps, but if they do not get outside much, they might.

My pediatrician has recommended the vitamin drops since my ds was 2 weeks old. She said it's not so much an issue in the summer, but vitamin D is more of an issue in the winter.

think the official advice about vit d is very localised and will depend on the ethnic mix of your neighbourhood. My feeling is that if dc is pale from pale skinned parents and spends some time outside everyday that he won't need extra vit d but if he is of african or south asian descent and spends all his time outside then he probably will. dyswim?

tiktok, could you explain your post please? You say it's standard advice and HV isn't wrong...but then say that most babies don't need supplements...I may be being dense, but I'm not really getting you

thanks

tassiss. most babies don't need supplementing but some babies might especially if they have darker skin.

okay still abit confused by this.
So if people are exclusively breast feeding for 6 months they do need to administer vitamin drops? Unless they get out in the sun a lot. So if it is a dreary winter we should be doing that?

so if you dont use formula at all you need to supplement... how odd, I was never told that

i bfed all of mine, still am ds3, they were all soley bfed till 9months and i never gave any extra vitamins, breast milk is designed for babies, why would nature leave out something that the baby needs?

also tho there is not as much iron in bmilk, the iron that is in it is much easier for the baby to digest and absorb, unlike in vitamin drops etc, which are likely to cause constipation.

i think the la leche league site has some good info regarding this

The problem is not that breastmilk is deficient in any way but our lifestyles have changed.

These days more and ore babies are not being exposed to sunlight. They are bundled from house to car to indoor shopping centre wheras in times gone by they were walked in their prams in the park, down to the shops daily. Hence the danger of vit d deficiency and the current advice to supplement.

I never gave supplements, just took ds in the pram for half an hour every day to walk the dog.

Supplements my arse.
Wot a load of bollocks