Breast Feeding and Vitamins

vitamins-clip-art-1407711Breast milk has lots and lots of advantages; breast is best. Even so, breast fed babies require additional vitamins. They should begin Vitamin D once breast feeding has become established. In the baby aisle at the grocery store, Enfamil sells D-Vi-Sol. (You may not buy their formula, but they still want to sell you somethingJ) Around 4- 6 months, babies begin to outstrip their iron stores and begin to require an iron supplement. Preterm infants don’t have the extra time to lay down enough iron stores and require additional iron after birth. When it comes to adding iron, you can transition to polyvisol with iron which includes both vitamin D and iron plus other vitamins. However, babies don’t always take to the taste and smell and that means even more stained laundry! So, after 10 babies of our own between us, the doctors’ favorite iron supplement is NovaFerrum and is found on Amazon.

To recap, we recommend the following:

–Beginning after birth, give Vitamin D drops: 1 dropper (1 ml) daily.

–At 4 months, continue Vitamin D drops and add NovaFerrum: 1 ml daily obtained on Amazon.com. Alternatively, at 4 months, you may give a single vitamin supplement combining iron and vitamin D plus other vitamins. Common brands include Poly-vi-sol with iron: 1 ml daily or NovaFerrum supplement with iron (found on Amazon ):1 ml daily.