As a family medicine physician, I routinely see newborns in the hospital during those first precious hours and days before they go home. One of the routine treatments I strongly recommend is the vitamin K injection given shortly after birth. Vitamin K is not a vaccine, it is a vitamin that is low in newborns. Oral Vitamin K does not work well, it is best given as a shot.

Newborns naturally have very low vitamin K stores. Vitamin K is essential for normal blood clotting, and without enough of it, babies can develop vitamin K deficiency bleeding, or VKDB. This bleeding can occur in the first days of life or, more concerningly, weeks to months later. Late VKDB can involve bleeding into the brain, and approximately 30% to 60% of infants who develop late VKDB have intracranial bleeding. Intracranial bleeding can cause developmental delays, inability to speak, feed or walk, or death.

A large recent U.S. study helps put this risk into perspective. Researchers studied 5,240,780 infants born between 2017 and 2025. Of these babies, 234,825 did not receive the recommended intramuscular vitamin K injection.

Babies who did not receive vitamin K had a significantly higher risk of bleeding during the first six months of life: 288 bleeding events per 10,000 infants compared with 186 per 10,000 among babies who received vitamin K. After adjustment for other factors, the risk of bleeding was 47% higher.

The difference was even more striking for bleeding in the brain. Infants who did not receive vitamin K had more than twice the risk of intracranial bleeding—33 versus 13.2 cases per 10,000 infants. They also had a higher rate of death accompanied by bleeding during the birth hospitalization.

When I discuss vitamin K with new parents, I understand that every medication given to a newborn deserves thoughtful consideration. But this is a simple preventive treatment that has been given for decades with an important purpose: protecting babies from a rare but potentially devastating and preventable bleeding disorder.

When my babies were born, they all received Vitamin K. Please know that physicians give their loved ones Vitamin K.