Vitamin K for baby - injection or oral?

[binnymk]

Hi, I'm due to have a baby soon and have been given a leaflet about Vitamin K for the baby upon birth. The options are administering the vitamin either by injection or orally. There seems to be a doubt that there may be a risk with an injection, but the NHS are pushing me towards it. What do other mums/pregnant mums think?

ds had the injection, no problems and it was over and done with.

Had neither for either kids... did a lot of reading including the excellent AIMS booklet. There is an article on this website :
withwoman.co.uk/
Just type vit K in the search engine. It's written bya MW called Sara Wickham.

Princess, I don't think it's irresponsible, we researched carefully and weighed the options. With due respect, your child's condition is not relevant to this situation.

I believe it is a questionable practice to dose up your child with various concoctions on the very small chance that something could go wrong- following that premise to the logical extreme we should give all newborns antibiotics and anti-virals in case they get life threatening infections (far more common than brain haemorrage in our filthy hospitals, I'll wager) which is a ridiculous idea! At some point we must accept risks, I chose my point.

My sister refused vitk for her ds. From what she said the risk was incredibly low and also that vit k is produced in the baby's gut as soon as the first feed passes through. Doesn't tie in with needing 3 oral doses, though, does it? Hmmm. Will have to look it up.

Although I didn't like the idea, I went with the injection. I was on aspirin and heparin throughout the pregnancy and it's positively indicated in that case. My consultant indicated that the injection was faster-acting and more effective.

I thought the link with leukaemia was pretty tenuous too.