For your health and baby’s development during pregnancy, it’s important to have the right nutrients and vitamins. This guide highlights some of the key ones to have when you are expecting.
When you are pregnant, you should have a diet that consists of a variety of foods including proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and fats. Here’s where you would get the right nutrients and vitamins for pregnancy health and for the growing infant inside you.
While a balanced diet is the best way to receive nutrients, vitamin supplements are helpful to fill in any nutritional gaps in your daily diet. However take note that you should only take vitamin supplements on a health care provider’s recommendation.
Table of Contents
REMINDER…
Supplements do not replace a healthy diet but rather ensure that a woman is receiving enough daily nutrients. Vitamin supplements work best when taken as part of a healthy diet and not as a substitute for a healthy diet.
The Top Nutrients and Vitamins for Pregnancy
Aim for these essential nutrients in your daily diet. Most of them can be found in the food you eat everyday but if it’s insufficient, consult your healthcare provider on getting the right supplement.
Calcium
Baby Benefits: Builds bones and teeth. (Your growing baby takes the calcium she needs from your body, so to keep your bones and teeth healthy, you need to get enough to replace that amount.)
Your Benefits: Protects your bone density. It may also help prevent high blood pressure while you’re pregnant.
Pregnancy RDA: 1,000 milligrams (mg); don’t exceed 2,500 mg
Best Food Sources: Yogurt, milk, orange juice with calcium added, cheddar and cottage cheese, tofu.
Choline
Baby Benefits: Helps prevent problems in the spinal cord and brain, called neural tube defects, and enhances brain development.
Your Benefits: Builds strong bones and may help prevent high blood pressure.
Pregnancy RDA: 450 mg; don’t exceed 3,500 mg
Best Food Sources: Egg, pork tenderloin, salmon, beef, chicken, broccoli or cauliflower.
Docosahexaenoic Acid (DHA)– one of the omega-3 fatty acids
Baby Benefits: Helps boost brain development and vision.
Your Benefits: May reduce your risk of heart disease in the future.
Pregnancy RDA: 300 mg
Best Food Sources: Salmon, blue crab, canned light tuna, catfish, fortified eggs.
Folic Acid
Baby Benefits: Helps protect against spinal cord birth defects during the first 30 days of pregnancy, helps prevent early miscarriage and premature delivery.
Your Benefits: Prevents anemia.
Pregnancy RDA: 600 micrograms (mcg)
Best Food Sources: Lentils, spinach, white enriched rice, enriched spaghetti, broccoli, orange juice, enriched bread.
Iodine
Baby Benefits: Needed for brain and nervous system development; important for preventing stunted growth, severe mental disability, and deafness; important in preventing miscarriage and stillbirth.
Your Benefits: Important for a healthy thyroid.
Pregnancy RDA: 250 mcg, do not exceed 1,100 mcg
Best Food Sources: Cod, yoghurt, cottage cheese, baked potato with peel, cow’s milk, fish sticks, baked turkey breast, navy beans.
Iron
Baby Benefits: Helps prevent premature delivery.
Your Benefits: Wards off anemia in pregnant women.
Pregnancy RDA: 27 mg; don’t exceed 45 mg
Best Food Sources: Whole grain cereal, enriched rice, white beans, beef, lamb, white meat chicken.
Potassium
Your Benefits: Helps keep blood pressure in check and maintain proper fluid balance; necessary for normal heart beat and energy.
Pregnancy RDA: 4,700 mg
Best Food Sources: White beans, winter squash, spinach, lentils, sweet potato, yoghurt, orange juice, broccoli, cantaloupe, raisins.
Riboflavin
Your Benefits: Needed to produce energy; helps your body use the protein from food.
Pregnancy RDA: 1.4 mg
Best Food Sources: Raisin, yoghurt, mushrooms, cottage cheese, bran cereal.
Vitamin B6
Your Benefits: Helps produce protein for new cells, boosts the immune system, and helps form red blood cells.
Pregnancy RDA: 1.9 mg
Best Food Sources: Garbanzo beans, baked potato with skin, beef, chicken breast, pork tenderloin, halibut.
Vitamin B12
Your Benefits: Helps produce red blood cells and helps your body use fat and carbohydrates for energy.
Pregnancy RDA: 2.6 mcg
Best Food Sources: Salmon, rainbow trout, canned light tuna, beef.
Vitamin C
Your Benefits: Makes it easier for your body to absorb iron from plant foods; builds strong bones and teeth; boosts immunity; keeps blood vessels strong and red blood cells healthy.
Pregnancy RDA: 85 mg; do not not exceed 2,000 mg
Best Food Sources: Sweet red pepper, orange juice, strawberries, grapefruit juice, broccoli, orange, tomato.
Vitamin D
Baby Benefits: Helps your baby’s body use calcium to build bones and teeth.
Your Benefits: Helps your body absorb calcium from food and use it to build your bones and teeth.
Pregnancy RDA: 600 international units (IU); don’t exceed 4,000 IU
Best Food Sources: Milk, fortified orange juice, fortified breakfast cereals, egg.
Zinc
Baby Benefits: Brain development.
Your Benefits: Necessary to grow and repair cells and produce energy.
Pregnancy RDA: 11 mg; don’t exceed 40 mg
Best Food Sources: Cooked oysters, whole grain cereal, beef, crab, pork, white beans, yoghurt.
