Vitamin D

Did you know that you’re meant to be giving your toddler a vitamin D supplement?

Neither did I. My friend mentioned it the other day, after advice from her paediatrician. Her boy Hugo could be Logie’s twin (both look worryingly like sons of Boris Johnson), although I’m afraid he is much better about sharing toys than Logie. Hugo had a lovely portrait done the other day (he also sits much stiller – maybe that explains the sharing), and I am thinking about photocopying it to save money.

Anyway, I’ve looked up vitamin D, and apparently the UK Chief Medical Officers wrote to GPs and other healthcare professionals a few months ago to remind them that all children aged 6 months-5 years should be given regular doses. Plus three other vulnerable groups – pregnant women, breastfeeding women and anyone over 65.

There’s some pretty convincing evidence that it can help prevent rickets, MS, diabetes, TB and cancer, to name just a few.

Shame this hasn’t got through to my health visitors then. None of them have ever mentioned it.

We went to see one the other day, after a muffled but vaguely accusatory voicemail telling us we had to. Because we had taken him to the marvellous walk-in clinic at Hammersmith Hospital ages ago, when he had such a bad vomiting bug he couldn’t even keep water down. And it turned out that he had a throat infection too. And that I am still amazing at parking, even in curved spaces in hospital carparks, even with a screaming toddler in the back seat.

Anyway, I had been wondering how much he weighed. My second disc disaster in my back within 6 months had given me a clue that he was getting a bit heavier.

We had one aborted attempted about a month ago. The health centre runs two sessions a week, and only one is on a day that I don’t (pretend to) work. It’s 12-1pm. Are there any children under 2 in the UK that aren’t meant to be either eating or sleeping at that time? Masses, I’m sure. So the first time, we got there at about 12:30. There were 62 people in the queue ahead of us. We went home.

This time, we were there at 11:59. Only a handful had beaten us. After 25 minutes not one of us had been called, and Logie had finished inspecting the contents of everybody’s handbag and buggy.

Eventually he was weighed (26lb – but he was a 10lb baby – see/understand earlier references to bad backs and getting really fat whilst pregnant) and we pootered through to the health visitor. She asked if we had any issues, and I said we’d been going through a patch of early waking, which was a slight bore. ‘What time?’ she asked. ‘5, 5:30’ I replied. She laughed.

LAUGHED.

Apparently so long as they’re asleep til 5am that’s fine. That’s normal. Apparently we should feel a bit silly for mentioning it. And we definitely shouldn’t feel hatred miffed that nearly all our friends’ toddlers (with a few notable, heartfelt exceptions) sleep til 7am or later.

But back to vitamin D. You may be interested to hear that the Food Standards Agency is considering an application for vitamin D-rich baker’s yeast to be allowed in the UK. Then I shan’t need to worry about vitamin drops, I’ll just include it in my weekly boulangerie output.