Hello,
I am a breastfeeding peer counselor with our local WIC program, an RN,
and the mother of a breastfeeding toddler age 21 months. My daughter
has had just below normal CBCs since she was first tested at 6 months.
Her Family Practice Doctor has chosen to treat her with supplemental
iron, Ferrous Sulfate 15 mg twice a day (morning and night) and
Poly-Vi-Sol, a vitamin supplement that also contains an additional 10mg
of ferrous sulfate in the middle of the day. Despite this large amount
of iron, she continues to test just a few points out of range of normal,
on the low side. Once or twice she tested more near normal and we were
instructed to stop the iron, at which point she fell back to an
unacceptable point and had to resume. The poor thing has been on this
regimen since six months old. It has blackened her teeth (which we know
can be removed somewhat with baking soda, but not completely). I know
enough to give it with vitamin C (orange juice) to increase absorption,
but she nurses first thing in the morning for about a half an hour, once
or twice in the middle of the day for about 10-15 minutes, and once at
night for about 10 minutes before bed. It is very difficult to avoid
foods that will interfere with her iron absorption, and it has been very
difficult to get iron-containing foods into her. She doesn't really
like to eat meat much, will not eat spinach, and has decided since about
16 months she no longer wants her infant cereal, but the same cereal
Mommy and Daddy eat. We tried cream of wheat with no luck, even though
we were eating it. We feed her Total cereal every morning.
I suppose this all wouldn't matter too much, except she has had some
developmental delays, been late to walk, crawl and talk and is receiving
services from Early Intervention for this. We have brought her to
Floating Hospital in Boston to see a hematologist who has run many tests
that haven't given us any answers, waiting to hear back on an iron
absorption test, which I'm guessing is normal since we haven't heard
anything yet and it was done last week.
My question is: I went to Bread and Circus and a salesperson sold me
something called Herbal Iron by NatureWorks, European Liquid Formula,
Iron and Herb Multivitamin Dietary Supplement manufactured in Germany.
What caught my eye was this: it has iron as iron-II-lactate. May we be
better off giving her this than the ferrous sulfate? What do you
think? I will run it by the hematologist, but this is not a mainstream
medical approach and I fear she will not be open minded. She told us
once that "sure" our daughter was "somewhat anemic" but that all she
thought it would mean was that "maybe she wouldn't be able to run a
marathon".
I appreciate your opinions and will use it to guide our decisions as
parents as well as knowledge to pass on to my clients/patients in the
future.
Sincerely,
Wendy Lemire
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