family tools
choose a tool resource directory
find a practitioner parenting toolbox product safety media reviews family fun guide send an e-card family astrology

community features choose a feature birth stories find a Mothering friend live chat mothers' writing group teen voices

	new baby breastfeeding

Perspectives on Supplementation
Excerpts from an Interview with Ruth Lawrence

"We don't know the short- and long-term consequences of vitamin D supplementation on the otherwise exclusively breastfed baby. Research on vitamin D has yet to address the impact of supplementation on the breastfeeding infant or on the breastfeeding mother. We don't know whether there are any changes in the pH of the infant gut or in the gut flora, how any gut changes would affect rates of infection, how supplementation changes linear growth in infants who are not deficient, how compliant mothers are with supplementation recommendations, or how common aspiration is among babies who are supplemented. Might supplementation destroy the confidence of some mothers so that they never begin breastfeeding? Does supplementation affect the duration of breastfeeding?"

"The reason that we are having problems with vitamin D today is that certain children do not get enough sunshine. We all have the prodromal chemical in our skin and we just need it activated by sunshine. Lifestyles have changed and that's why it's become a new problem. This issue should not be presented as a deficiency of human milk. It is due to our change in lifestyle that does not allow for enough vitamin D through sun exposure."

Ruth Lawrence, MD, directs the Breastfeeding and Human Lactation Study Center at the University of Rochester Medical Center, where she is a Professor of Pediatrics and Obstetrics and Gynecology. She was a participant in the October 2001 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Vitamin D Expert Panel Meeting and is the co-author of Breastfeeding: A Guide for the Medical Profession (Mosby-Year Book, 1999).