How early you taking prenatal vitamins?

[ColleenEatsVeg]

Hi All,

Thinking about pickup up some prenatal vitamins this week after I keep reading about the benefits of taking them pre-conception. How many months have you lot been taking them.. I am thinking realistically it will probably be three-ish - four months if not longer seeing we are continuing to TTC without luck.

You cant overdo the length you take them right?

[ShowOfHands]

If you do eat veg then as long as you take folic acid, I don't think you need to worry about anything beyond that. Of course being healthy helps but prenatal vitamins are ££ and generally you'll absorb their contents better from a well rounded diet.

Folic acid is recommended from 3 months before conception (but obviously you can't predict something like that, I took them until I conceived so about 14 months in the end) until 12 weeks into the pregnancy.

[Bexamundo]

I started taking folio acid as soon as we started ttc. Starting taking rip-off priced pregnacare conception tablets (his n hers, 18 quid a packet!) after 16 months ttc with no success!

[ColleenEatsVeg]

I purchased pregnacare 90 pack, about £8 and hope to give them a go now we ate TTC

[ColleenEatsVeg]

Meant to say "are" not ate :)

[Bexamundo]

I write ate instead of are all the time. Smart phone? Not so much!

[Meglet]

I took them as soon as I got a BFP, 4 weeks each time.

But I always take vitamins anyway, I just swapped to pregnancy ones at that point.

[ColleenEatsVeg]

I did look at the conception ones but being veggie (and not the cheese and chips kind) I tend to eat well. I know I could probably get away without any but just rather feed my anxiety in it all

[hannahgilmore]

You should start taking prenatal vitamins once you decide to conceive. These vitamins help you go through a healthy pregnancy. An effective Prenatal vitamin should be gluten free and contain three minerals ie iron, folic acid and calcium. Calcium helps build stronger and denser bones, folic acid prevents birth defects and iron reduces the risk of premature delivery and infant mortality.

[nannyl]

i started folic acid 5 months before planning on trying, and took pregnancy ones 3 months before becoming pregnant.

I was rather OTT though and had decided the exact cycle I would get pg. I did a million and one normal and perhaps some would say rather extreme things in the previous 6 months, to "ensure" i did get pregnant then, and luckily for me it worked!

pleased i did as i had HG and could take no more folic acid or any other vits etc from 6 weeks, as i vomitted them all the time, and cause i had lots is my system it was one less thing to worry about.

Bearing in mind as well as no folic acid i was barely eating anything at all, and the very few things i kept down were junk and sugary processed food with next to no nutritional value either.

[redrollers]

Ha ha, been on them for 2 years!!

[Reallea]

I have a bowl of cereal every day for breakfast- it is fortified with vitamins and folic acid, as are most breakfast cereals.

My cereal of choice is fruit and fibre which has 250µg per 100g. The sanatogen mother-to-be tablets i sometimes remember to take have 400μg in them. Patient.co.uk says 400μg is the recommended daily amount for pregnant women- although sanatogen say the recommended daily amount is only 200 (because they say 400μg is 200% of the daily recommended amount).

Anyway based on that and the fact I probably eat about 200g of cereal, I figure I am getting 500μg even when I forget to take the tablet (which is pretty regularly)

[Reallea]

oh the micrograms sign has gone wierd... I will try and post again with ones that will work!


My cereal of choice is fruit and fibre which has 250µg per 100g. The sanatogen mother-to-be tablets i sometimes remember to take have 400µg in them. Patient.co.uk says 400µg is the recommended daily amount for pregnant women- although sanatogen say the recommended daily amount is only 200µg (because they say 400µg is 200% of the daily recommended amount).

Anyway based on that and the fact I probably eat about 200g of cereal, I figure I am getting 500µg even when I forget to take the tablet (which is pretty regularly)

[nannyl]

200g if cereal a day? wow, that is alot...... nearly half a box of breakfast cereal per day!!!!!!

my fruit and fibre (though at the moment its waitrose not kelloggs) suggests a normal serving is 30g!

[Reallea]

Oh darn, just weighed how much I normally have, it's only 100g (I am obviously far more greedy than the average waitrose customer... But now gutted that I am clearly not always getting enough folic acid every day when I thought I was! (although if sanatogen are to believed, I am!)