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Pros and Cons of Vitamin K

A reader has asked about the necessity of the Vitamin K injection. The practice of administering Vitamin K injection to the newborn in the delivery room was instituted in hospitals during the era of routine mother-infant separation. Although controversial in other countries, injection of the newborn with Vitamin K right after birth is almost universal in the United States. The rationale for this is that newborns are born with a "deficiency" of Vitamin K, which they also do not receive in breast milk. This leads to a decrease in Vitamin K-dependent blood coagulation factors, making newborns more susceptible to hemorrhage in the first several days of life until Vitamin K is manufactured in their systems.

A small dose of 1 mg seems to have no ill effects on the baby beyond the pain caused by the injection itself. If newborns are allowed to breastfeed soon after birth, the injection of Vitamin K is less necessary, since the colostrum that comes immediately from the mother's breast before her milk lets down is usually rich in Vitamin K. Some midwives feel that the risk of cerebral hemorrhage is heightened in very fast or very long labors, when the baby has a strongly cone-shaped head, or when the baby demonstrates significant heart-rate decelerations during late labor. However, breastfed babies born with "easy births" do not necessarily need Vitamin K.

The pain that the individual newborn feels from a shot with a needle, although a real consideration, is not usually taken into account. Although some hospitals do allow oral Vitamin K instead of the intramuscular injection, the general medical practice has been to standardize the Vitamin K injection for all newborns, just as newborns are given antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent blindness in the assumption that the mother has gonorrhea.

It might be said that the standardization of the Vitamin K injection and indeed all the routine procedures performed on the newborn baby reinforce the messages to both baby and mother that nature is inadequate, that they are now dependent on the medical profession for their health.