What are prenatal vitamins and their purpose?
Prenatal vitamins are pills used to have a balanced nutritional diet and supplement that helps with the required recommendation. Having a well-balanced diet might seem difficult due to different senses of taste and cravings.
The prenatal vitamins help fix the low essential nutrients and support the body and the baby’s needs. In addition, it helps build and protect the immune system makes them healthy and strong.
It is common for the immune system to get weak during pregnancy and consistently fall sick. Using prenatal vitamins with vitamin c, vitamin A, zinc, and iron will strengthen the immune system.
There is a popular saying that pregnancy makes mothers eat for two. As a result, the nutritional needs increase, and they must take a lot of minerals and vitamins. Prenatal vitamins also help reduce the risk of pregnancy complications, like anemia and neural tube defects.
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Do Prenatal Vitamins Make You Gain Weight
Multivitamins are also healthy and nourishing to the health, but it is just for the body’s needs. The prenatal vitamins are vital and best formulated to support you and your growing baby, providing it with all the nutrition you both will need all through the process.
Vitamins and minerals must be taken daily during pregnancy to help the fetal development with great support.
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Prenatal vitamins also have DHA (docosahexaenoic acid), which allows proper development of the baby’s nervous system, brain, and eyes.
It is rich and has so much use it is recommended for those trying to get pregnant or expecting. It is essential to make fetal development healthy if you have health issues, dietary restrictions, or complications during pregnancy.
Other benefits that can be gotten from these vitamins include;
Nausea Reduction
Vitamin B6 helps reduce nausea that comes with morning sickness. Women who use it before getting pregnant have reduced nausea during the first three months comped to those who didn’t. Boost in Fertility: it makes the chances of getting pregnant healthy fast.
Less Risk Of Congenital Disability:
Prenatal vitamin gives more than enough folic acid, which helps prevent the risk of neural tube defects growing in the baby.
There are different popular belief about prenatal vitamins; some says it affects the growth of nails and hair; that makes them grow faster and stronger, which has not been proven medically.
Another is that it makes women gain weight due to prenatal vitamins’ quality minerals and content. But, again, the answer is negative because there is no evidence or proof to back that up. Although most expecting women tend to gain weight naturally due to their pregnancy and the baby growing, whether they take prenatal vitamins or not.
Difference Between Traditional Multivitamins And Prenatal Vitamins
There are many different types of prenatal vitamins available in the market. Although not all the vitamins have a particular type of formulation, what you’ll mostly get in them are key important nutrients.
It contains calcium which every adult and pregnant woman needs at least 1,000 milligrams each day. In prenatal vitamins, you get between 200 and 300 milligrams of calcium. It helps strengthen their bones.
Folic acid
Taking enough folic acid helps reduce neural tube defects like spina bifida. It is recommended that expecting women and those trying to get pregnant take about 600 mcg of folic acid daily. Although getting enough folic acid from eating foods alone might be difficult, a supplement is recommended.
Foods that you can get folic acid from include green leafy vegetables, broccoli, beans, and asparagus, other foods that are fortified foods include pasta, bread, and cereals.
Iron
This element is important to help re-create new red blood cells in the body because the blood volume increases during pregnancy. Iron is very important, and every woman needs 27mg of it each day.
Vitamin B
This vitamin helps transform the food eaten into energy so the body can effectively use the nutrients and give support during pregnancy. It is also essential for the brain development and blood of the baby. Vitamin B9 is also important but can be gotten from food.
Vitamins C And E
Have a major role in producing collagen and immunity from the potent antioxidant from the vitamins. In addition, it helps build the cartilage, skin, bones, and tendon, while vitamin c is very important for pregnancy to help increase iron absorption.
Iodine
It is good for the mother and the baby; it is important for thyroid hormone production in the blood. In addition, it helps regulate the fetus’s developing nervous system growing in the womb.
Magnesium, Sodium, And Potassium
This vitamin helps regulate the body’s hydration level and the status of the muscle contraction and the nerve impulses. In addition, magnesium helps with sufficient blood flow to the brain, which every pregnancy needs.
When Is The Right Time To Take Prenatal Vitamins?
It is best to consult your doctor before taking any prenatal vitamins. When you are pregnant or trying to get pregnant, your doctor would recommend or prescribe the best for your health.
Most women who have multiple babies at once, teenagers, or women with a history of abuse of drug tendencies are short of minerals and vitamins. Therefore, prenatal vitamins are very vital for women in that category.
Also, breastfeeding mothers can continue with their prenatal vitamins as often recommended by the doctors after a safe delivery. It helps them produce more nutrients for the breastmilk.
Important advice for those women trying to conceive is to take more folic acid supplements as this has been very helpful and vital.
The prenatal vitamins might not be the reason for the weight gain but can cause some other unserious side effects to like;
- Very dark stools
- Diarrhea or constipation
- Feeling metallic taste on your buds
- Lost appetite
- Urine that has a color like green or yellow
- Sleepless times
However, these are the most common symptoms in pregnant women, so it is hard to confirm if prenatal vitamins cause all these side effects.
Avoiding the use of prenatal vitamins during pregnancy might put the baby. In addition, the mother is at risk because while your baby is growing, it will take all the vitamins and nutrients needed from the mother’s body and leave it without any nutrition or vitamins that will keep it healthy without supplements.
As a result, the body will have no strong support, leading to serious health complications affecting the mother and the baby’s wellbeing.
In summary, prenatal vitamins are vital for women who want to conceive and the ones expecting, and it is great for the health of the mother and the baby.
It has been proven to help boost fertility, lessen the possibility of congenital abnormalities and increase the level of iron in the body. Using prenatal vitamins three months before the plan to conceive, the body will have accumulated enough calcium, folic acid, and iron to strengthen and support the baby’s growth.
In some cases, prenatal vitamins can bring about bloating, constipation, or another minor effect. However, it has zero calories, so there is no proof it can lead to weight gain.
Is It Early To Start Taking Care Of Your Baby?
It is never too early; the good thing about prenatal vitamins is that it takes care of the baby and supply the mother with all the vitamins and nutrients she needs for support before and after the pregnancy stage.
I am a proud mother of two, a lover and home builder. My love for children gave birth to the bestofmotherearth.com with the aim to cover topics from child health, pregnancy, parenting, family, relationship, struggles in families and also food.
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