Prenatal vitamins are daily supplement pills formulated for pregnant women. They don't contain calories, so they can't foster cellular growth, but they're important to cellular health and well being. While they don't help your embryo grow fast, they do help it to develop properly -- and prenatal vitamins help prevent it from growing too slowly.
Your Pregnancy
Just as your pregnancy is divided into trimesters, so your developing baby's time inside you breaks into three distinct parts. During the first two weeks or so of development, your baby is called a zygote, and resembles nothing so much as a ball of cells. Once it implants in the uterine lining, the zygote becomes an embryo, and begins to develop organ systems. At the end of the eighth week of pregnancy, the embryo becomes a fetus, which it remains until birth.
Embryonic Growth
Despite the fact that the embryonic period of development is a critical one -- organ systems develop during this time, the heart starts beating, and the brain and spinal cord begin to develop, among other things -- not much growth takes place during the embryonic stage. By the end of the eighth week, your little embryo is only about an inch long, notes AmericanPregnancy.org. As such, the primary concern with nutrients during the embryonic period isn't so much whether they help an embryo grow quickly as it is that they help an embryo grow correctly.
Prenatal Vitamins
Prenatal vitamins are vitamin and mineral supplements that help provide for your cellular needs and those of your developing baby. They're very similar to regular multivitamins, except that they have some nutrients present in larger amounts. Most critical to the embryonic period of development is folic acid, note Drs. Michael Roizen and Mehmet Oz in their book "You: Having A Baby." Folic acid helps your embryo to form the brain and spinal cord -- deficiencies can lead to birth defects.
Other Considerations
Later in pregnancy -- particularly during the second and third trimester -- your fetus grows very rapidly. Just as taking prenatals during the embryonic phase can help your embryo develop properly, taking the pills later in pregnancy can help your fetus grow at an appropriate pace. The vitamins won't make your fetus grow faster than it should, but they will help to ensure that it doesn't grow slower than it should, by ensuring adequate nutrients in your bloodstream.
References
- AmericanPregnancy.org: Baby Size
- "You: Having A Baby"; Michael Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet Oz, M.D.; 2009
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