Pregnacare alternative?

[Girlmama3]

I've seen a few saying that it's making constipation worse. I want to stop taking it.

But, can I take a normal multi vitamin tablet and folic acid in early pregnancy?

You have to be careful with normal multivitamins as they often contain things that are not pregnancy friendly. You can have the key vitamins for pregnancy separately if you like.
I use asdas own pregmancy multivitamin, omega 3 and extra folic acid. I use high fibre drinks like fybogel and lots of fruit and veg to minimise digestive issues.

I also used Asda own brand of pregnancy vitamin

Have you tried the pregnacare gummies? I get on better with them than the capsules x

Thank you both, I'll head to asda and hope they have some 😀

Are you sure the problems are being caused by the vitamins? The extra progesterone produced during pregnancy can cause constipation so it may be that.

The problem with general multivitamins is they may have levels of certain vitamins (particularly vitamin A) that are too high for pregnant women.

You could try an ‘own’ version like Superdrug, Boots etc but they are very similar to pregnacare.

My midwife suggested folic acid, vit c & d as that’s all we need really and it’s cheaper then pregnacare so that what I started taking after 12 weeks and my eating habits were better!

My midwife just advised folic acid and vitamin D. I tried pregnacare but it didn't agree with me so just bought the 2 individual vitamins

I took vitamin D and folic acid as separate tablets since I still maintained a relatively normal diet in the first trimester.

If your diet is 100% potatoes/beige/vomiting you'll benefit from vitamin C etc etc but its such a short time and baby isn't nourished from the placenta primarily yet.

Take care with Vitamin A as others mentioned and iron is usually the culprit making you constipated. A decent varied and healthy diet is the most important thing if you are supplementing with Vit D (bony health) and Folic Acid (to reduce risk of neural tube defects)

I take all my vitamins separately, bit of a pain but it is much cheaper and I do it so I can take natural folate instead of folic acid (which is synthetic) as it’s easier for your body to absorb xx

It's the iron that generally causes issues with the full pregnancy vitamin - and to be honest it doesn't seem to have much bearing on whether you end up iron deficient later on in pregnancy anyway so just opt for folic and D for now and keep your fingers crossed you escape the iron all the way through.

If you end up on iron later it won't be because you skipped the bit of iron in pregnacare - its your iron stores that pregnancy affects. Just do what you can - plenty of iron in your diet and keep your fingers crossed!

@Milkand2sugarsplease exactly that it was the iron that screwed me up

I take the Seven Seas pregnancy multi vitamin and have found it fine