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CHOOSING SUPPLEMENTS FOR PREGNANCY

Writer's picture: Lauren BrinkLauren Brink

Updated: Jan 23, 2024

Lauren Roukia Nutrition

Guide to choosing Supplements for Pregnancy



Sorting through the supplement aisle at your local pharmacy or grocery store can feel overwhelming. Most healthcare practitioners recommend a prenatal multivitamin for pregnant (or those trying to get pregnant) women, including me! While multivitamins all generally strive to offer a complete spectrum of required vitamins and minerals, there are specific nutrients that play an integral role during pregnancy that you should be keeping your eye out for.


Step 1: Read the Label!


Give yourself an idea of what nutrients are found in the supplement. Using this blog as a guide, look out for the key nutrients highlighted and start to see how they compare. The supplement you choose could vary based on your needs; serving size and format should all be considered.


Nutrients can be reported based on gram (or microgram, milligram) or based on their international unit (IU). Nutrients can come in different forms, synthetic or more food based and these forms have different rates of utilization within the body. The IU is a method to standardize these variations. Folic acid will have a higher IU than Folate, even when the same dose is given. When evaluating nutrient information, I use the “percent daily value” set by the US Food and Drug Administration as the point of reference - PLUS it’s always listed on the supplement bottle label


Step 2: Find these nutrients.


The individual nutrients listed below are of general importance during conception, pregnancy and lactation. However, it’s always important to remember your needs are unique to you and this is an opportunity to personalize your nutrient supplementation to your specific needs, including your diet, lifestyle, and genes.


The table below has the nutrients broken up between those which are easy to find in your standard multivitamin and those which are not standard, due in part to their bulky size. These ‘bulky’ nutrients are of particular importance for fetal development and thus are important to focus on in your diet and potentially assess the need for additional supplementation.


Tip: Consider working with me to unlock your personalized recommendation plan and set your and your family for optimal health! Learn more here

STANDARD NUTRIENTS



BULKY



Step 3: Purchase & Implement into your daily routine


Click here to see my list of recommended prenatal multivitamins with the nutrients described here highlighted for your review.


I recommend taking a multivitamin in the morning with a meal of food. This can help with sensitive stomachs. If iron is a concern, it is recommended to take your iron containing multi on an empty stomach, ideally with a bit of orange juice (to help with absorption).


What helps me remember taking my vitamins is my weekly pill organizer that is large enough to hold vitamins and other supplements (check out this one here).


I take a high quality DHA supplement daily in addition to my multi. A list of DHA supplements available on Fullscript, which is hard to get enough of in a standard prenatal,

can be found here.

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