Too anaemic for home birth..any top tips for rapid increase in iron levels?

[cupcakesgalore]

What a bummer. I've just been told my levels are down to 9.2 and they have to be a minimum of 10.2 for a home birth - poss. 10 if the manager of m/ws agrees. I'm really disappointed - pool is ready, I've mentally got into gear with the whole thing and now this. I've got to take 600mg of iron every day for 2 wks when they'll retest my blood. I'll be 39 wks then. The ,m/w said it might poss. be enough time to get it back up by 1g. I hate iron tablets - they make me realy sick and tummy achy, so I'm not in for fun over the next fortnight but worth a try. Anyother top tips for rapidly increasing my iron levels?

Ok so it is true that no one can stop you from having a homebirth and sometimes people advise you not to to cover themselves, you sound VERY symptomatic and if you were to have a heavy side of normal blood loss you might well have to be transferred to hospital, possibly as a real emergency which would be terribly stressful especially for your dp and your mw, although you may not be too worried at the time due to feeling spaced out. Don't get me wrong I am very pro homebirth and had one with low ish iron, but I was not symptomatic.

Btw, I think spatone actually is more likely to raise your levels simply because it is better absorbed...I was on the ferrous syrup fo about 8 weeks before and only went up half a point, but once on the spatone, it was so quick and I felt immediately better after feeling like cr*p for ages. (Plus the syrup made me feel ill anyway so it was always nagging me and I wasn't able to be fully compliant over it)

I was in your position having only a few weeks to mess about with, didn't know what would work best etc. and basically didn't want to be feeling awful whatever my levels were.

I found it so easy to take the spatone in juice, I didn't have any problems digesting it and found I could have easily the 2 sachets and more every day. Made such a difference, hope it works for you xx

PS if your level is 9.2 that's really not a disaster, despite the awful symptoms...I think some of mine were caused by dehydration and anxiety plus general exhaustion, as with DS1 I went down to 7.9 and felt way less flaky!
FWIW I bled heavily after this one, but only for a minute and then had the syntometrine injection. No transfer needed, they estimated blood loss at 5-600ml, which is about a pint and totally normal, and I don't really think it's caused me any real trouble.
Saying that, I've only got one older child to look after!

Very best of luck.

No time to read whole thread but Floradix, floradix, floradix. It's the best! It's also easy to absorb and contains loads of other amazing stuff which will give you energy and iron without constipating you.

Floradix is available in the chemists/

discussion on Anaemia on Radical midwives Scroll down till you get to lovely reply from Angela Horn of the Home Birth Reference site! Plus further down there is also a link to Ronnie Falcaos site and suggestions for diet and supplements.

Stay strong, continue to plan your HB!