Dear Ms Monika

Welcome to Healthcaremagic.

It is indeed good to know that your son is growing along nicely.

Pediatrician have prescribed multivitamin/iron and calcium as supplement.

With their rapid growth and considering winter months with less sunny spells, these supplements help to provide them extra nutrients (similar to supplements given to you by your Gynae doctor).

Given in appropriate dosages, there is no significant harm from them.

I hope your query is resolved

Regards
Dr Tejas Shah
Pediatrician, Ahmedabad

Hi Monika,
Exclusively breast feed child usually gets the complete nutrition from mother's breast milk.

However, there are certain circumstances where additional nutrition of Vitamin, Calcium, Iron are necessary.

1. Baby gets the storage of iron/ calcium from mother in 3rd trimester (last 3 months) of pregnancy. If your child was born prematurely, the storage was not done. These babies need supplementary nutrition to back up their growth and storage.

2. Diet of mother is important factor. Improper diet may cause inadequate nutrition level in breast milk. Common deficiencies found are Vitamin D, B12 . Vitamin D is deficient in breast milk of even well nourished mothers. So it may be necessary to supplement your baby with these vitamins (or a multivitamin). Vitamin D is also necessary for absorption of Calcium from gut. So a vitamin-D deficiency can also cause Calcium deficiency.

3. Calcium is very important for child's bone growth. Adequate supply of calcium is therefore necessary in this period.

As, your pediatrician has already examined your baby and prescribed these medicine, he/she had definitely considered these facts. So, please continue the medicine as his / her prescription.

Feel free to post, if you have more queries.

Hello

I presume that your baby is full term with normal birth weight. As per guidelines of American academy of pediatrics only Vit. D needs to be supplemented in full term, normal birth weight baby.

Iron along with calcium and vitamin D supplements are useful particularly in low birth weight and premature babies. It is due to insufficient amount of Vit D present in breast milk.
Both Zincovit and osteocalcium contains Vit D.

Although you are taking iron and calcium tablets, I will suggest you to give syrup or drops which contains vitamin D. Don't give all the three syrups, as it is not needed in your baby.
With regards