I have been meaning to write this post for you all sooner rather than later, but I would now say it’s one hundred percent definitely later. When I had started this post, I was 32 weeks pregnant, and as I am finishing this post, I have almost an 8 month old baby in one of my arms.
I had met with my obgyn and mfm (maternal fetal medicine md) back in January 2023 to basically first interview them to decide if I liked them enough to deliver my baby whenever I decide to have a baby and to talk to them about any preparations, I should consider doing to get my body ready for when I do decide to get pregnant and have a baby.
When I chatted with the both of them, they both said at that time that I didn’t need to take a prenatal vitamin and that the vitamins I was taking separately were a good choice to make sure my body has all of the vitamins and minerals necessary to successfully carry a baby. For reference, the vitamins I was taking at the time were as follows:
- Grass Fed Beef Liver
- Methyl Assist
- Probiotic
- Colostrum
- Chlorophyll
- Vitamin D + K2
- Vitamin C
- Magnesium Glycinate
- NAC
- Milk Thistle
- Turmeric
- L-lysine
I know that kind of sounds like a lot, but they were each serving their own purpose.
Then, fast forward to December 2023, and we decided it’s time to have a baby. In January 2024, we met with my obgyn and mfm to confirm my pregnancy and ensure everything was okay (which it was). Then, my obgyn tells me I need to really take a prenatal vitamin now. This really annoyed me because we had talked about this last year, and I really didn’t want to take a prenatal. So many of the prenatals are synthetic. For example, they include folic acid, which is the synthetic man-made version of folate, and they include ascorbic acid, which is the synthetic man-made version of vitamin c. I make it a point to not take synthetic supplements, so why would I start at a time when I am literally creating life? I simply wouldn’t. A prenatal vitamin was just not going to work for me and be in my birth plan.
These doctors will all just tell you to take a general prenatal, and they won’t tell you which one to take. And, when I asked them to go through the list of the supplements I was taking to determine which ones I need to take while pregnant and which ones are not necessary or potentially harmful to the baby, they then told me that there is no scientific evidence surrounding whether supplements help. They said that what evidence shows is that prenatals have benefits. How does that make sense? In one breath they say take a prenatal, but in the other breath they say there is no evidence that supplements are beneficial to a baby in utero. Prenatals are made up of a lot of vitamins and minerals—aka supplements; so, these doctors really should be able to tell me which supplements are crucial to take for my and my baby’s health and which supplements are beneficial to a baby in utero if they want me to take a prenatal.
When I was researching prenatals to hopefully find a halfway decent one, I discovered that there is no real standard around prenatals. Each prenatal has its own ingredients, and not all of the vitamins and minerals in one prenatal are included in the other. It made the hunt very frustrating, and in the end, I decided taking a prenatal just wasn’t going to work for me. I didn’t want to take some of the extra vitamins and minerals that were in included in the prenatals, and I was not going to take synthetic versions of these vitamins and minerals either. I could not find one prenatal that did not have something synthetic in it. It is truly disappointing that that’s the situation given that it is 2025.
All in all, I had to figure out for myself what is necessary to cook a perfect healthy baby in my belly, and after an excessive amount of harassing, calling, and researching, my mfm finally ran through my list with me and worked with me to figure out what I should be taking and what I should stop taking while pregnant. I became comfortable with taking the following while I was pregnant:
- Grass Fed Beef Liver
- Methyl Assist
- Probiotic
- Colostrum
- Vitamin D + K2
- Vitamin C
- Magnesium Glycinate
So, my list of supplements was definitely paired down, and now that I have a eight-month-old, I could probably add back in some of my old supplements that I like to take. I just haven’t gotten around to it just yet. I do think the above list worked for me and my baby though. According to my doula, I had the healthiest and largest placenta she has ever seen. She has helped deliver a lot of babies, and she performs placenta encapsulations. So, she has seen a lot of placentas. Also, I was in labor for 38 hours, and I delivered a perfectly healthy baby boy with no complications of any sort. However, I say all of this with the caveat that you should take what you are comfortable with and do what works best for your family. This is just what worked for me and my family, and I figured it would be helpful to provide an alternative to prenatals, since when I was searching, I couldn’t find anything on my own.
Here’s to being well preserved.
Always,
Taylor
