Third trimester, upset tummy every 2 weeks - possibly caused by iron?

[SparklingNarwhal]

A little history, found out I was anemic on the 28th week and given ferrous sulphate which i started taking at week 30 (due to not being able to get to the clinic in working hours) these made my ill, TMI warning, it gave me the runs for 5 days.
Community midwife recommended Spatone. So I did that for a week and a bit and after a while of getting used to it, I added my prenatal vitamin back in ( I stopped when I got the iron tablets since I didn't want to cause complications) ... I got sick again, more diarrhea. So I dropped the vitamin pill.
Just got my new blood results back and I'm still anemic but it has gone up slowly. The clinic tried to encourage me to take at least ONE pill with my double Spatone and I decided to meet them halfway and try Floradix. Low and behold, I'm sick ...again.

I know when I'm going to ill now because I get eggy burps 12 hours before the runs start.
I don't know if I'm unlucky, and keep getting a tummy bug every two weeks or if it's the iron since it seems to happen when I try to increase my dose. And it's not a lot that I'm increasing it by!
The rotating from an iron rich diet to a BRAT diet won't be helping much either and it's starting to effect my mental well being, I constantly thinking 'is this going to make me sick again? Can I eat normally again now? Is it safe?' and worrying about going into labour anemic when I'm struggling to resolve it on my own.

I'm now waiting for the clinic or the midwife to be contactable to see if I can take imodium since I need to be able to go to work or go out of the house in general.

I've heard ferrous fumerate is meant to be gentler on your stomach.

I've been taking 2 or 3 tablets of that a day (I occasionally forget after a meal). My hb levels went from 96 (21 weeks) to 106 (25 weeks) but are now down to 66 (28 weeks) and I don't know what to do!!! They're taking more bloods next week but I don't know how to improve those levels beyond what I've been doing!!!

Any and all ideas are welcome...

Physicskate,
Here's a few things I've been doing. An iron rich diet coupled with vit c. You may have already heard all this advise but just in case.
So, a spoonful of treacle in warm water a day for a boost ( I'm about to test this one) more full English's with black pudding! Red meat with tomato sauces, so cassaroles, spaghetti Bolognese, chilli. Jacket potato for lunch. For snacks, Dark chocolate, dried fruits like apricots and raisens, hummus with carrot sticks.
Avoid cheese when eating iron rich stuff, and ditch all caffeine drinks. But drink Apple or orange juice with your iron foods. Also, I'd investigate if it's a vit b12 deficiency, since you need those vitamins to make more red blood cells.

Iron tablets are the devil. I was the same as you for most of the third trimester and got little sympathy from docs or midwives, despite it interfering with my ability to go to work.

I personally found the ferrace sulphate better than the fumerate on my bowels. Luckily I got my levels up and stopped taking at 36 weeks.

There is the option of an iron infusion but this isn’t given unless levels are quite low.

Well, I managed to get the midwives to approve me using imodium and I'm getting back to normal again. Level are 96, up from 94 but I have ways to go yet. Once everything is settled I'm going to start adding the Floradix to orange juice with a meal to ease it into my system instead of taking it neat. My double Spatone is already in a 1ltr water bottle I carry around all day. I am wondering if it's when a take a 'big' dose on one go ( I know 10g inst big but my body seems to stress it's too much!) So if I spread the dose over the entire day it might help.
I've noticed I've lost a lot of visible weigh too from being I'll so often too, hoping that's not going to be a problem when it comes to breast feeding.