Breast milk provides your baby with complete nutrition, with one exception -- vitamin D. Your baby needs vitamin D to absorb calcium and to prevent a softening and weakening of the bones called rickets. Luckily, you can prevent rickets by giving your baby vitamin D from additional sources.
Sources
Your baby gets a limited amount of vitamin D from your breast milk, usually 25 international units per liter, or less. The amount of vitamin D from breast milk depends on the amount of vitamin D you receive a day in your own diet. Once your baby graduates to cow’s milk -- no earlier than 1 year of age -- vitamin-D fortified milk provides all the vitamin D your baby needs.
Sun
Sun exposure also provides your baby with vitamin D, but it’s hard to measure just how much vitamin D from the sun a baby gets. Plus, you don’t want to depend on the sun for vitamin D because of the risk of skin cancer. While using sunscreen decreases the risk of skin cancer, it also decreases the amount of vitamin D received from the sun. Your baby gets less vitamin D from the sun if you live in a high altitude or an area with a lot of air pollution. The amount of vitamin D varies with the weather. On cold, cloud days when your baby is bundled up, she receives less vitamin D from the sun.
Supplements
To ensure your baby gets an adequate amount of vitamin D, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends supplements of 400 international units a day beginning in the first few days of life. You can get over-the-counter vitamin D supplements for infants at a drug store. The supplements come in liquid form you administer with a dropper. Just as in pregnancy, you also need vitamin D supplements while you breast-feed. The recommended daily allowance for breast-feeding women is 600 international units a day.
Research
An article in the May 2004 issue of “The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition” cites three studies that suggest increasing the mother’s amount of vitamin D to high doses increases the vitamin D the baby receives through breast milk. For example, a study by the Medical University of South Carolina’s Division of Neonatology found that supplementing women with 2,000 or 4,000 international units of vitamin D for three months improved the amount of vitamin D breast-fed babies received. If you are interested in increasing your vitamin D supplements, talk to your doctor about the risks and benefits.
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