Vitamin K for Newborn

The newborn needs vitamin K to prevent bleeding occurrence. This vitamin is not popular indeed compared to another vitamin, such as vitamin A, D, or E. Vitamin K can be administered by injecting the sterile solution and by giving via oral. If the bleeding occur in the brain, for an instance, then the baby will not able to normally grow because of this flawed.

Vitamin K has a significant role in handling the bleeding occurrence because it also having an important role in the blood coagulation process (vitamin K is also called the vitamin of coagulation). There are three forms of vitamin K:

Vitamin K1 (phylloquinone) which is contained in the vegetables.
Vitamin K2 (menaquinone) is synthesized by intestinal microflora in the digestive tract system.
Vitamin K3 (menadione) is a synthetic vitamin.

Why does newborn need vitamin K right after they were birth? There is a thing you need to know that in our body we have about 13 coagulant factors which having an important role in the blood coagulation process. Its content depends on the concentration of vitamin K in the body.

When baby was birth the concentration of coagulant factors in the body is rapidly decreased, and reached the lowest point on the age of 48 to 72 hours. Then, those factors will slowly increase for few weeks, but still under the concentration in adult. The reasons of newborn are having low concentration of vitamin K is because when they were in the womb the placenta usually didn’t ready to deliver fat properly (while vitamin K is a fat soluble vitamin). Besides, newborn’s digestive tract is still sterile, so that the number of microflora is still low and consequently it can’t produce vitamin K. Furthermore, the intake of vitamin K from breast milk is usually low.

We have to beware of the symptoms of vitamin K deficiency. The symptoms are:

Bleeding occurrence in the umbilical cord, nose, mouth, ear, urine tract, or anus.
Stool or vomit having blackish color.
Blood keep comes out from the wound for at least 6 minutes, whereas the wound part had been pushed.
If bleeding occur in the brain, then baby will look pale, screaming crying, vomiting, fever, fontanel looks bump, sometimes baby look yellowish, finally will follow with stiff.

The mortality number caused by vitamin K deficiency occurs in between 10 to 50%, while the flawed number is 30% to 50%. Therefore, every newborn should be given vitamin K.