Prenatal vitamins for you and your baby's health

Prenatal vitamins are multivitamins that contain nutrients, vitamins and minerals made specifically for pregnant women to ensure that the baby is getting the right nutrients for proper growth and development and that your health is being properly maintained. 

Choosing the best prenatal vitamin for you is something that should be discussed with your doctor because there is no set standard on what should be in a prenatal vitamin. After discussing taking a prenatal vitamin with your doctor, she may suggest that you need some form of prenatal vitamin, but most likely you will need to take at least 400 micrograms of folic acid. Iron is another mineral that you should probably take in higher amounts during your pregnancy because a pregnant woman needs twice as much iron as a woman who is not pregnant.  You should also watch out for vitamins like vitamin A that can cause birth defects if too much is taken. You should check labels and make sure that there is less than 10,000 IU of vitamin A in your supplement. Prenatal vitamins are all you will need to take as a supplement unless your doctor tells you otherwise.

There isn’t a disadvantage to taking prenatal vitamins as long as you check the labels and talk about your needs with your doctor. However, some women experience increased nausea in their first trimester because of the iron. If this is the case, talk to your doctor and they can suggest a vitamin with lower amounts of iron.

Calcium is the only thing that prenatal vitamins don’t provide the full amount. This is mostly due to the fact that calcium is a big mineral and prenatal vitamins are already large. If you can’t get enough calcium from your diet because you are lactose intolerant or for some other reason you will want to take calcium supplements. This is because the baby takes calcium from your own bones for its development. If you are not replacing this calcium you will have an increased risk for osteoporosis later in life. 

 Pregnant women should realize that prenatal vitamins are to supplement your healthy diet so you can’t use prenatal vitamins to make up for poor eating habits.