Vitamin K Resources

Starting points

Here’s a blog post which serves as a good starting point for finding out about what vitamin K is, why it’s offered, and why it’s contentious for some people.

Seven things every parent needs to know about vitamin K

Get fully informed

Here’s the page relating to my Vitamin K book, which contains everything I know about this topic, in an easy to understand format.

Vitamin K

More information for parents

I have a number of blog posts which explain some of the key facts and issues relating to vitamin K

Vitamin K: evidence, risk and informed choice

Four vitamin K myths – and the truth

Five things parents should know if they decide to decline vitamin K for their baby

Vitamin K, persuasion tactics, and tips

Vitamin K and tongue tie division

Vitamin K articles in the midwifery/medical literature

I have also written several articles on vitamin K for midwives and doctors.

I am including them here for interest, although they do not always explain the basics in the way that my books do. That’s because, when I write in the medical literature, I’m writing for people who already know a lot about the topic.

The first article that I wrote about vitamin K was published in 2001.

The title reflected the ideological and practical question that most interested me at the time; that of whether nature had really ‘got it wrong’.

We knew that several thousand babies need to be given vitamin K in order to prevent each case of vitamin K deficiency bleeding (or VKDB; a disorder formerly known as haemorrhagic disease of the newborn).

Unfortunately, there has been little research interest (as is so often the case) in questions such as (1) how we might be able to pick out the babies who are truly at risk rather than giving vitamin K as universal prophylaxis and (2) whether and why it might benefit babies to have a relatively low level of vitamin K compared to adults.

That’s why I wrote my articles, which generated some really interesting discussion with a lovely paediatrician named Edmund Hey, who is sadly no longer with us. I have discussed some of his work in my book, Vitamin K and the Newborn.

I continue to be interested in the ideological questions that we were raising at that time, especially as vitamin K really does seem to be the proverbial sledgehammer to crack a nut.

Vitamin K: a flaw in the blueprint?

Deconstructing prophylaxis

The downside of trying to “manage” birth…

Vitamin K: the stories behind the evidence

Again, if you’d like to look at the issues and the evidence, my book is the best resource I have for this:

Vitamin K

Here’s hoping that these vitamin K resources help you in your decision making and/or information sharing.

 

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Books to help you become informed and make the decisions that are right for you…

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