Pregnant? Nursing? Trying to Conceive? MegaFood Has Answers to All Your Prenatal & Postnatal Vitamin Questions

Maybe you’re trying to conceive and you’re wondering if it’s too early to add a prenatal vitamin into your routine. Or maybe you recently gave birth, and in between night feedings and tummy time, you’re wondering what your own body may be missing now that you’re no longer taking the prenatal vitamins you’ve relied on for the last nine months. 

To get the very best advice about pre and postnatal nutrition needs, we spoke to Abigail McShinsky, Herbalist and Education Manager at MegaFood, and Mariela Sanchez, a Brand Manager at MegaFood who oversees the company’s prenatal nutrition category. They offered insights into how proper nutrition and supplementation help to support women in all stages of pregnancy, and they answered many of the most common questions related to prenatal — and postnatal — vitamins. 

No matter which stage you’re in on your motherhood journey, these tips will help you to take care of your health — leaving you in an even better position to grow and care for a baby. 

Is It Safe to Take a Prenatal Vitamin Before You Get Pregnant? 

In short, yes. It’s not only safe, but because prenatal vitamins contain everything a mother would need to support her body during pregnancy, adding a prenatal to your wellness routine can also help to support your body when trying to conceive. “We know that up to about 70% of women start taking a prenatal even before pregnancy, when they’re planning, thinking, trying,” Sanchez says. “We know that moms are buying prenatals and using them in the planning stage.” 

According to Mayo Clinic: “It’s generally a good idea for women of reproductive age to regularly take a prenatal vitamin. The baby’s neural tube, which becomes the brain and spinal cord, develops during the first month of pregnancy — perhaps before you even know that you’re pregnant.”

Do I Need a Prenatal Vitamin if I Have a Healthy Diet?

“We definitely encourage getting your primary nutrition through your diet,” Sanchez says. “However, we know that there are gaps, particularly in the first trimester in particular, when women have a lot of trouble with keeping down food, digestion, morning sickness, things like that.” She says that supplementation during this phase is a bit like “closing the gaps” that you may not be getting from food alone. “I always say food first — that’s where we’re meant to get the bulk of our nutrition — but consider your prenatal multivitamin your nutritional insurance policy.”

Prenatal vitamins not only help to support the health of the mother and developing baby before and during pregnancy, they even can work to prevent certain birth defects that are linked to malnutrition or vitamin deficiency.

What Should I Look for in a Prenatal Vitamin? 

• Folic acid. “Folate, or folic acid, is most important in the first several weeks of pregnancy,” McShinsky says. “It’s important for the entire pregnancy journey, but it’s vital for neural tube development in the first couple of weeks.”
• Iron. While many women are lacking in iron across their lifetime, during pregnancy, it’s especially important to supplement your iron intake to reduce the risk of iron deficiency, maternal anemia, and low birth weight.
• Calcium. Calcium is imperative to help build your baby’s bones and to help prevent preeclampsia. 
• B Vitamins. Vitamins B6, B9, and B12 are often recommended during pregnancy as they help to develop the baby’s brain and nervous system, alleviate your nausea, and help to prevent certain birth defects. 
• Vitamin C. Vitamin C helps to support your own immune system and build strong bones and muscles. 
• Vitamin D. Vitamin D helps to support bone health in developing infants.
• DHA. DHA is an omega-3 fatty acid that is one of the building blocks of fetal brain and retina development.

How Do I Choose Which Prenatal Supplements to Pair Together? 

In addition to a multivitamin, you may want to add individual supplements to your routine as well. “My general rule is just checking for overlap,” McShinsky says. She stresses the importance of avoiding supplements that may affect the performance of another supplement and instead, leaning on supplements that are shown to work well together, such as probiotics, omegas, vitamins, and minerals.   

“It’s going to be a different answer to that for everybody,” McShinsky says. “We often have to defer people to their healthcare practitioner, because we all have unique needs. Just pay attention to the amount of overlap you’re getting in your supplements, and certainly if you’re pregnant, defer to your OB-GYN or your midwife to make sure that you’re not overdoing it.” 

Should I Take a DHA Supplement During Pregnancy? 

If you’re taking a prenatal multivitamin that doesn’t already contain DHA, it may be beneficial to add one to your routine (with the go-ahead from your OB-GYN). Many doctors and nutritionists recommend DHA supplementation because it helps to support the baby’s brain development during pregnancy. “A multivitamin can only go so far; it’s not the be-all and end-all of nutrition,” McShinsky says. “Things like omegas, the DHA family especially, are incredibly important for eye development, brain development of babies.” 

Should I Take a Choline Supplement During Pregnancy? 

If your prenatal multivitamin doesn’t already contain choline, McShinsky and Sanchez say yes.  

Choline is a nutrient that was formerly classified as a B vitamin because it’s so structurally similar. “Choline supports baby’s cognitive development,” Sanchez says. “There’s a lot of great science out there right now showing that when mothers supplement choline when pregnant, babies actually have greater cognitive skills.” 

“We’ve known about choline, nutritionally speaking, for many years, but it wasn’t considered what we call an essential nutrient, which is something vital to human health that the body can’t make, so we have to get it from the diet,” McShinsky says. “We knew what plays a role in cognition and nervous system health, but we really didn’t know how much. It wasn’t until 2020 that the FDA actually assigned a percent daily value to it and said, this is so important. It has now been given essential nutrient status, and now we have a daily recommendation set for everybody.” For pregnant women, the recommended daily value for choline is 930 milligrams. 

“It’s really tricky to get enough choline in your diet,”  McShinsky says. “The most common ways to get it are egg yolks, organ meat, like beef liver, things that people don’t always eat a ton of. If you’re on a plant-based diet, it becomes even more challenging, so supplementation becomes even more important.” If your daily multivitamin doesn’t contain that much choline, you may want to boost your intake with a choline supplement. She recommends MegaFood’s Baby & Me 2™ Prenatal DHA & Choline as a great way to get both choline and DHA that you may be lacking. 

Should I Take a Probiotic During Pregnancy? 

A probiotic may be very beneficial to both mother and baby throughout pregnancy and even into postpartum. 

“Probiotics can support some of the digestive complaints that often accompany pregnancy, like constipation and diarrhea,” McShinsky says. She also says that probiotics are equally important for your developing baby, as they help to support their digestive and immune health.

“We may see people shift to probiotic support towards the end of pregnancy, because research has found that taken throughout the third trimester and even postpartum — especially if that baby’s born vaginally — a probiotic can be very supportive to the baby’s microbiome,” McShinsky says. 

What Should I Try To Avoid in a Prenatal Vitamin?

“When it comes to prenatals, I think what’s not in your prenatal is just as important as what is in your prenatal,” McShinsky says. “Look for a brand that aligns with your dietary preferences, and make sure it doesn’t have any of the top allergens, if that’s a concern for you.”

As a general rule, things to look out for in a prenatal vitamin include:

• Common allergens (particularly any you have personally) 
• Additives
• Pesticides 
• Dietary restrictions (such as avoiding animal byproducts if you’re vegan or vegetarian) 

“Pregnancy is often the time that people are maybe taking a multivitamin for the first time ever, and it can be really overwhelming,” McShinsky says. “At MegaFood, we actually go the added step to test for over 150 different pesticides and put that right on the label, and we have [other nutrition information] available on our website, so it’s really easy to see if it’s going to work for you, whether it’s your dietary preferences, being vegetarian, or even kosher certification.”

Is It Safe To Take Herbs and Adaptogenic Supplements During Pregnancy? 

“There’s a lot of botanicals that we would rightly recommend you discontinue when you become pregnant or if you’re breastfeeding,” McShinsky says. “And it’s not because they’re inherently unsafe, it’s just because we don’t have safety data, because we’re not going to do clinical studies on pregnant women and their babies. Erring on the side of caution, there’s a lot of herbs we recommend discontinuing.”

If you’d like to continue taking certain herbal supplements during pregnancy, McShinsky recommends focusing on “nutritive” herbs. “They’re almost like foods,” she says. “These are herbs like nettle, that are really rich in minerals and support overall nutrition.” She also recommends a category of herbs called galactagogues, which are the herbs that help support breast milk production and lactation. “They also kind of fall into the nutritive category, so they’re very nutritionally dense,” McShinsky says. “One that MegaFood uses is moringa leaf. It can also be used as a food, and again, it’s really mineral dense, nutrient dense and helps support milk production.” Other common galactagogues are blessed thistle, fenugreek, and even foods like garlic and leafy greens can be really supportive in that regard. “We don’t necessarily think of them as herbs, but they can be really powerful plant medicine,” McShinsky says. 

Do I Need a Postnatal Vitamin? 

While there are nutritional fluctuations throughout all stages of pregnancy, McShinsky says there is no greater fluctuation than the one that happens between pregnancy and immediately postpartum. “There’s definitely a need for postnatal support,” she says. “New moms and parents owe it to themselves to replenish the nutrition that they just passed so lovingly, so graciously, on to their baby. I think taking a postnatal multivitamin is the best thing that mom can do after giving birth.” 

What Is the “Fourth Trimester”? 

“‘Fourth trimester’ is really just a social term talking about the first three months after giving birth,” McShinsky says. “It usually pertains not only to mom’s health, but we tend to loop in baby as well. That’s supporting things like nutrition, but also supporting lactation production, if they’re choosing to breastfeed. It’s a huge transition, not only from the baby inside your body to outside the body, but your transition into parenthood as well. There’s so many things happening in that time period: the hormonal fluctuation, the rebalancing going on in the body, not to mention just the emotional and mental overwhelm of caring for a brand new life.” 

What Ingredients Should I Look for in a Postnatal Vitamin? 

“Historically everyone’s been directed to just continue taking your prenatal, but we’re learning that there’s more to it,” Sanchez says. “There’s other nutritional needs in that fourth trimester. We’re seeing a lot of new moms that are concerned about their nutrition, lactation, sleep, mood — there’s a lot going on at that point.” 

In the fourth trimester, you want to focus on replenishing your postpartum body with these key nutrients:

• Essential vitamins and minerals
• Folic acid 
• Iron 
• Omega-3 fatty acids 
• Herbal supplements (for mood and sleep support)

“Switching to a postnatal multivitamin is really helpful for postnatal nutrition,” Sanchez says. She mentions that due to childbirth, lactation, and if you choose to breastfeed, you could see dramatic decreases in iron, folic acid, and iodine levels, which will need to be supplemented.”