News Moms Need

You may remember our past posts on the importance of giving babies their vitamin D supplements. This is especially true for breastfed babies or babies that eat less than 1 L/day of infant formula. Vitamin D helps prevent a bone-weakening disease called rickets. Babies can get this important nutrient from vitamin D drops.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants parents to make sure they’re giving babies the right amount of vitamin D drops. Babies need 400 international units (IU) of vitamin D per day. But some vitamin D supplements may be sold with droppers that could allow for parents to accidentally give too much Vitamin D to their babies. Too much vitamin D may cause things like nausea and vomiting, loss of appetite, excessive thirst, frequent urination, constipation, abdominal pain, muscle weakness, fatigue and other health concerns.

The FDA is working with manufactures to ensure vitamin D supplements for infants are sold with droppers that hold no more than the recommended amount for babies. In the meantime, when giving your baby her daily vitamin D drops, be sure you’ve filled the dropper to no more than 400 international units (IU). Visit the FDA Web site for more information. Learn more about vitamin D and breastfed babies.

Tags: 400 IU per day, baby health, infant health, multivitamin drops, oral vitamin D supplement, vitamin D

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 16th, 2010 at 11:20 am and is filed under Baby, Hot Topics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.