My Peditrician recommended giving my 9 mo dd a multivitamin w/ iron. If she needs it, I'll happily do so, but b/c iron can cause so many problems, I don't want to do this unless it's necessary. He didn't test her blood, so there is no evidence she has low iron. I have been trying to research on kellymom and my Dr. Sears book to find out if this is something I should do or not. Dr. Sears says that babies at her age are often recommended iron if their diet is low in iron or if they have low iron (We don't know if she has low iron, and I'll post her diet below). He and kellymom both say an exclusively breastfed child doesn't need iron or vitamins, assuming all else normal, but she gets food too.
Anybody out there with smarts on this issue to share? What would you do if it were you?
Eats food 3 times/day, including:
1-2 servings of brown rice/millet/lentil porrige (usually 2ce a day)
1 serving of black beans
1-3 servings of fruit, mostly pears and apples, but blueberries, nectarines, melon, etc. when available
1-3 servings of vegetables, esp. carrots, butternut squash, sweet potato, and green beans
1/2 an egg yolk about 3 times/wk.
Nbbles off our plates when we eat
Thanks IA for any advice. Don't want to not give her something she needs, or give her something she doesn't, you know. My pediatrician doesn't have many patients like us, so we get the generic advice sometimes.
DS had his Hb checked around Robin's age and it was a 10.0, which is on the low side of normal (or slightly below normal)- he also had those bleeding issues. I tried giving him the poly vi sol vitamins with iron in them and he utterly rejected them- like literally leaned over his chair and gagged when I gave them to him... So I stopped and instead focused on foods. (For the record, Poly vi sol is VILE. I gave myself a squirt of it in the mouth to try it out and almost puked myself- not only does it taste disgusting but it stinks and it kind of numbs the tongue for about 10 minutes)
I did a lot of millet (which contains iron) and iron-fortified finger cereals for self-feeding, avocado cubes, fried potato cubes (his favorite), beans.... I made high-iron teething biscuits out of nature's best iron fortified cereals, millet, and molasses...
Just feeding him food (because he had not been eating solids thus far) upped his Hb to 10.9 in 1 month's time, which is in normal range. Several months after that it was checked again and was an 11.6
If she isn't looking or acting anemic, she probably isn't...
You could toast your brown rice or millet in a cast iron skillet before grinding it... to add iron to the grains.... also mix black strap molasses into that porridge... I did a lot of "stealth mixing" of protein powder, etc into his oatmeal, etc etc...
Wow, what a great diet for you dd! I agree happy healthy great diet need no supplements. And even if she was not eating solids at this age she wouldn't need a supplement unless it was shown to be needed. I hate when drs do a one size fits all appoarch and instead they should test the child to actually see what is going on! It is just a finger prick to tell who really needs iron. It also makes me wonder if your dr knew what a great diet your dd has.
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