Natural Birth
ktshafra
member
vitamin k? eyedrops?
ktshafra
member
I'm trying to find information on the pros and cons of the vitamin k shot and antibiotic eye drops for baby immediately following birth. I'm having a difficult time deciphering my information (thank you, pregnancy brain). What are you deciding to do and why? TIA
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Re: vitamin k? eyedrops?
I refused both with DS and will do the same with this one unless I learn something new. The eyedrops are completely unnecessary in normal births with healthy mothers and mostly done in case the mother has an STD they didn't tell the docs about. The resident who came and did the spiel because I was a bad patient who declined all these things (hep b shot too), said neither the eye drops nor hep b were vital to everyone and more of a "blanket procedure". She was insistent that we do the vitamin K shot, but I had been taken oral vitamin K drops and gave those to DS as well. If he had birth trauma or were getting circ'd, I would've absolutely done the shot.
To me, these are personal decisions that you should come to yourself, under the guidance of your doctor or child's pedi. There is a ton of valid info out there (medical journals, package inserts for the vitamin k, descriptions the purpose of the eye drops, etc), you just have to do the research and come to a decision you are comfortable with. Good luck.
Simply put: Vitamin K aids in blood clotting (thus could be needed if you are getting other vaccinations or circumcizing immediately). The eyedrops are an antibiotic. That sounds great, but really they are only effective against chlamydia and gonorrhea. If you have no history of either, they are not exposed to those and therefore would not be beneficial. Hope that helps.
I'm definitely going for the vitamin K shot, but refusing the eye drops.
Although we're not circ'ing, I tend to draw special circumstances to myself and don't trust baby not to have extra help with blood clotting. It's a vitamin shot, after all :P Even though we could get the benefits from oral drops, I don't feel comfortable waiting the extra handful of weeks those drops take to reach a therapeutic range.
Pregnancy # 6
4 missed chances
2 loving children
1 on the way
We did the eye goop and vitamin K.
I think the vitamin K is very important. You have no way of knowing with absolute certainty that your baby did not experience birth trauma. Yes, there are risk factors and signs, but birth trauma can also happen without risk factors (vacuum, etc.) and brain bleeds can happen.
Just FTR, I totally agree that a vacuum or forceps assisted delivery would be a risk factor and I would get the shot if either of those were used in the birth.