If you're feeling nauseous or are otherwise experiencing unpleasant gastrointestinal symptoms after taking your prenatal vitamin, you're not alone. While it could be merely coincidence -- pregnancy and nausea go hand in hand, and the vitamins aren't necessarily to blame -- it's also possible that the vitamins themselves are causing your symptoms.
Pregnancy and Digestion
Your digestive tract slows down considerably during pregnancy, leading to a host of gastrointestinal symptoms. If you're pregnant and feeling nauseated, you may be tempted to blame the prenatal vitamins you're taking. However, they aren't necessarily the culprit. There are a host of other reasons, most of them hormonally related, why you could be feeling ill. In fact, pregnancy-related nausea strikes over half of all pregnant women.
Prenatal Vitamins
If you're sure it's the vitamins causing your nausea, the likely cause is the extra iron in your prenatal vitamin. Pregnant women need quite a bit more iron than other women. In fact, you need around 150 percent of the iron you needed before you were pregnant. The iron further slows your digestion and can exacerbate pregnancy-related digestive symptoms.
Options
If your vitamins are making you feel queasy, don't simply stop taking them; they benefit both you and your baby tremendously. Instead, talk to your obstetrician about trying another brand. You may find you're more sensitive to some brands than others. You might also ask your doctor whether you can break your pill in half and take it at two separate times of day; this can reduce the effect of the iron on your digestive tract.
Further Insight
If you've exhausted your options and your prenatal vitamin is still making you sick, your obstetrician may be comfortable with your taking a regular daily multivitamin for the first several months of your pregnancy -- at least until your digestive sensitivity is reduced. You generally don't need extra iron until the fourth month of pregnancy, by which time you're less likely to react to the pills. If you go this route, you'll need to supplement with extra folic acid -- 800 to 1,000 mcg per day -- since developing babies need more of this vitamin than is normally included in regular multivitamins.
References
- "What to Expect When You're Expecting"; Heidi Murkoff and Sharon Mazel; 2008
- "You: Having A Baby"; Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.; 2009
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