While a healthy woman who eats a balanced diet doesn't need prenatal vitamins in order to conceive, many obstetricians recommend it's worth starting prenatal vitamins early. This is because good nutrition can make it easier for your body to conceive a child and maintain a healthy early pregnancy.
Role of Prenatal Vitamins
Prenatal vitamins serve similar roles in pregnant women and those trying to conceive. In essence, they are quite similar to regular daily multivitamins, with the exception of the fact that they contain large quantities of certain key vitamins and minerals that women need during pregnancy. While prenatal vitamins are high in iron, this is more important in late pregnancy. Early on, and before conception, the most important component of a prenatal is folic acid.
Folic Acid
Folic acid is one of the B-vitamins. You need it in small concentrations even if you're not pregnant. During very early pregnancy, however, your developing baby uses it to help form the neural tube, which goes on to become the brain and spinal cord. In their book "You: Having A Baby," Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz explain that much of the neural tube forms before you even know you're pregnant, making it particularly important that you take folate prior to pregnancy.
Conception
The female body is set up to produce conditions that encourage conception each month, and to avoid conditions that encourage conception if it's unlikely that a pregnancy would be successful. For instance, it takes a certain percentage of body fat to support a healthy pregnancy. Women who have very low body fat are unlikely to support a pregnancy, and will often stop ovulating to prevent a pregnancy that would inevitably fail from occurring. Similarly, undernourished women who are vitamin deficient may not be able to ovulate or conceive.
Expert Insight
By using a prenatal vitamin in the months leading up to conception, you help ensure that you are not vitamin deficient. This, coupled with good overall nutrition, encourages your body to proliferate a thick uterine lining and ovulate regularly, which markedly increases your chances of conception, explains Dr. Miriam Stoppard in her book "Conception, Pregnancy and Birth." You may wish to discuss using a preconception prenatal vitamin with your obstetrician.
Warning
While prenatal vitamins can help ensure that you're healthy enough to conceive, and that if you do conceive, your early pregnancy lasts and the embryo has the nutrients it needs, you can't use prenatal vitamins to treat infertility. In women younger than 30, experts typically suggest that if you haven't conceived within 12 months of regular efforts to do so, you should talk to your doctor about your fertility.
References
- "You: Having A Baby"; Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.; 2009
- "Conception, Pregnancy and Birth"; Miriam Stoppard, M.D.; 2008
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