Vitamin D is essential to a baby’s healthy development, but how can you deliver it through breastfeeding?
When it comes to babies, vitamin D is essential to healthy bone development and the prevention to a weakened bone condition known as rickets. Deficiency can also lead to developmental delay, seizures and osteomalacia.
While vitamin D deficiency rickets among breastfed infants is rare, it can happen if an infant doesn’t receive enough vitamin D through food, supplements or sun exposure.
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But here’s the problem, babies can not get vitamin D from breast milk. That’s even if the mother is taking supplements.
Now there are vitamin D-fortified formula milk that you can buy at the drug store or supermarket, and also supplements made especially for babies. However, not all mothers feel okay about giving their newborn pharmaceuticals.
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Some specialists believe that an infant can get adequate doses of vitamin D if the mother’s breast milk has enough.
Normal vitamin D intake for lactating women should be anywhere between 200 UI and 400 UI. However, doctors believe that if a woman has between 4000 IU to 6,400 IU per day, her baby will get enough of the vitamin through breastfeeding.