[purple_daisy]

Hello ladies

I'm starting to get the mummy-to-be guilts about not taking pregnancy vitamins. I was on folate for three months prior to conception and continued taking folate then blackmores pregnancy vitamins until about 8 weeks. But then I got so sick with hg that it was a struggle to hold down water let alone vitamins so I gave up taking the tablets.

I started taking blackmores again around 20 weeks but within 4 or 5 days I was suffering terrible constipation so I stopped and within a few days the system returned to normal.

I am still taking zofran anti-nausea medication which does make me very susceptible to constipation but over the past month or so I've managed that with diet.

So how important are the pregnancy vitamins? I've had one GP tell me it is just money down the toilet and another told me to make sure I was taking them.

I would say my diet is fairly good. On an average day I have cornflakes with prunes and milk for brekky, a tuna sandwich for lunch, meat and salad/3 veg for dinner and snacks would be a yoghurt, 3 or 4 pieces of fruit, some crackers and cheese and the odd serve of crisps or a banana paddlepop. I also drink about 2L of water each day. Overall I'm pretty healthy apart from a vitamin D deficiency over winter.

What have you been told about vitamins in pregnancy?

[stopwhiningatme]

They were important for me because I was iron deficient.

[EBeditor]

You should talk to your OB, doctor or midwife, but as far as I know, folate is the most important one so well done!

Omega 3s and iodine are important and can be found obviously in fish and iodised salt. I became iron deficient in my 2nd or 3rd trimester but a doctor/midwife will usually pick that up in blood tests.

I also took calcium & magnesium tablets as I had bad leg cramps in pregnancy.

[fairymagic]

If you are eating a healthy varied diet I too was told they are not required. I had two different OBs for my three children and both said the same thing. The folic acid is the most important element to take early in pregnancy - one OB told me till 12 weeks the other till 20 weeks. Beyond that unless you have an iron deficiency, they are not needed.

[Ehill]

I did find the Elevit ones made me feel better with DS when I felt really crap. I was just so rundown and tired so for me it gave me peace of mind that my own body (not bubs!) was getting what it needed.

[robot sm]

My original GP just checked that I was taking something with folate, they haven't really been mentioned since then. They were adding to my first-trimester queasy feeling, so I stopped taking them daily, and would take them every 2-3 days, until bloods at about 28 weeks showed my iron levels had dropped. I went back to taking them daily and also started an iron supplement.

IMO, as long as you're managing to get a balanced diet and blood tests don't show any particular deficiency, you should be fine without them.

[Amberlily]

The folate is important to protect against neural tube defects - although I'm not sure how long you're supposed to be taking it (may not need to be for the full pregnancy).

When you're diagnosed as pregnant, most doctors will run a blood test for any vitamin deficiencies, so keeping any low levels topped up is important. Eg PPs iron deficiency.

Other than the folate - I've been told that bubs will simply take the vitamins from you for what he/she needs while growing in the womb (so as long as you're not deficient yourself in any vitamins, your baby won't suffer - your own body will - if that makes sense).

[HGL]

I think the folate is the most important but really only for the first 12 weeks. I too struggled to swallow Elevit during week 12-14 because it would make me gag and almost vomit.
The other vitamins and minerals are only really required if you're deficient in something in particular and much like a regular multivitamin, a lot of doctors claim it's simply money down the toilet.
I found the constipation caused by Elevit worse when you start taking it but then your body gets use to it. I've been using Swiss Pregnancy & Elevit on alternate days as the Swiss contains much less iron than Elevit.
Your diet seems fine but Cornflakes are very low in fibre, 1g a serve - you need at least 30g fibre a day. For the same amount of calories, 2 regular weetbix has 3.6g fibre. For 27 more calories, Uncle Toby's Bran Plus contains 17.8g fibre! HTH

[tazcan]

It is now recommended that you take iodine in Australia since NSW and a few other states have a deficiency - and you need especially high levels of iodine when pregnant and breastfeeding. When I was pregnant 2.5 year ago this wasn't in the pregnancy literature handed out to me by my doctor (although I knew about it then), but I noticed for this pregnancy it was now included in the handouts my gp gave me for pregnancy (both folate and iodine are important). Lack of iodine can cause mild to severe brain impairments in the fetus and young children. You would have been getting a bit extra since they now use iodised salt in bread (although there isn't much salt in bread) - and then it depends on whether you use iodised salt and eat lots of seafood or not.

From http://www.science.org.au/natcoms/nc-nutri...e(q&a).html

Studies conducted over the last decade in New South Wales and Victoria, where approximately 60 per cent of the Australian population live, indicate the presence of mild-to-moderate iodine deficiency in all groups tested. Study participants included school children, adult volunteers, and pregnant and postpartum women. The results of the National Iodine Nutrition Survey (NINS) conducted during 2003 and 2004 in school-aged children in all states except Tasmania and the Northern Territory are shown in Table 3. These results suggest a significant proportion of the Australian population is currently affected by iodine deficiency, particularly in New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria, with median urinary iodine concentration (MUIC) for the total sample of 104 micrograms per litre, suggesting borderline iodine status.

Moderate to severe iodine deficiency (population median urinary iodine concentration les than 50 micrograms per litre) has profound effects on intellectual development with the most extreme being cretinism. The health effects associated with mild iodine deficiency (population median urinary iodine concentration less than 100 micrograms per litre) have, in the past, been less easy to define as the outcomes are often sub-clinical. The term mild iodine deficiency is perhaps misleading as it does not convey the seriousness of the associated health effects.

[MrsLexiK]

I have been giving severe migrains and cluster headaches. My OB was recently away and so I had to seek the OB who was taking on his cases. He told me to stop the multi's I was taking and that really they were not needed too much anymore. He said he assumed I would be having a blood test in the next 2 weeks (which I was) and if need be I could go on single iron tablet and a single vit d tablet as well.

ETA: whilst I did have one headache in the last 10 days it was nothing compared to the ones I was having it was actually dealt with cat A over the counter pain meds, and I haven't had once since then.

This post has been edited by MrsLexiK: 04/02/2013, 01:22 PM