Take Note of This! Vitamin A Turns Out To Be Good For Puerperal Mothers. About 1000 women die from complications related to pregnancy or childbirth around the world every day.

Vitamin A For Puerperal Mothers

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Almost all of these deaths occur in developing countries, and most can prevent them by preventing complications such as heavy bleeding (bleeding), infections, and high blood pressure, as well as diseases such as malaria, anemia, and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) / acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) during pregnancy and puerperium.

Neonatal mortality accounts for 36% of deaths among children under the age of 5 worldwide). These deaths were mainly due to prematurity and low birth weight (31%), neonatal infections (26%), birth asphyxia (lack of oxygen at birth), and birth trauma (23%).

The proportion of neonates died from congenital abnormalities (6.8%), other non-infectious perinatal causes (5.7%), tetanus (5%), and diarrheal diseases (2.6%).

Vitamin A deficiency also remains a public health problem among women and children, affecting some 190 million children of preschool age and 19 million pregnant women, with the highest burden found in the World Health Organization (WHO) region of Africa and the South.

During lactation, vitamin A is very important for the health and vision of the mother. A good intake of vitamin A nutrients for puerperal mothers is 850 g of equivalent retinol (RE)/day, which may be difficult to achieve through diet alone in some areas.

Sources of Vitamin A for Puerperal Mothers

Food sources of provitamin A include vegetables such as carrots, pumpkin, papaya, and red palm oil; Animal foods rich in vitamin A include dairy products (whole milk, yogurt, cheese), liver, fish oil, and human milk.

Babies are usually born with a low reserve of vitamin A. Breast milk from a well-nourished mother is rich in vitamin A and is the best source for the baby. Therefore, mothers are recommended to give exclusively breast milk during the first 6 months postpartum.

The concentration of vitamin A in breast milk is highest in the first 21 days postpartum, that is, in colostrum in the first 4-6 days and in transitional breast milk in the next 7-21 days. After this, in industrialized countries, the concentration of vitamin A usually remains stable for the rest of the lactation period.

In areas where vitamin A deficiency is common, mothers can produce breast milk with a lower concentration of vitamin A. However, if a mother is unable to meet the increased need for vitamin A during breastfeeding through diet, her body will try to compensate for the low levels of vitamin A in breast milk by utilizing vitamin A reserves in the liver.

Vitamin A plays an important role in vision, physical growth and development, and immune function, and vitamin A deficiency increases the risk of night blindness and other eye conditions such as xerophthalmia, especially at times of high infectious disease rates and/or during seasons when vitamin A-rich food sources are scarce.

The mother's food intake is an important determinant of the concentration of vitamin A in breast milk and the vitamin A status of the baby. Programs such as postpartum supplementation, food diversification, and food fortification with vitamin A have been used to improve women's vitamin A status and to increase the vitamin A content in breast milk. It protects the vitamin A reserves of nursing mothers while addressing the problem of low intake of vitamin A from breast milk in babies.

Dosage of vitamin A for puerperal mothers

Vitamin A supplements are mostly well tolerated by postpartum women; However, maternal supplementation with high doses (more than 50,000 IU) can have side effects such as nausea, headache, fever, vomiting, increased pressure of the cerebrospinal fluid, blurred vision, drowsiness and lack of muscle coordination. However, these symptoms are generally temporary without long-term side effects.

How to Take vitamin A for Puerperal Mothers

Take Vitamin A supplements during the Puerperium period preferably by consuming them twice, namely: Take one capsule of vitamin A after delivery and take it again 24 hours after taking the first capsule.