Do I need prenatal vitamins? What are the best ones? Here are the best prenatal vitamins with folate for mom and baby. You already know that good nutrition is important during pregnancy.
Folate in Essential Prenatal supports healthy neural tube development
Helps facilitate healthy brain development in the critical 28 days after you conceive.
- Second Trimester
Supports continual development
Promotes continued growth of newly formed organs and tissues.
- Third Trimester
Prepares you for birth
Supports the nutrient needs of mother and baby.
It’s hard to know if you’re really getting all the vitamins and minerals you and your baby need. That’s where prenatal vitamins come in. They don’t replace a balanced diet but instead act as a backup—making sure you don’t fall short on the essential nutrients you need during pregnancy.
1. Ritual Prenatal Vitamins With Folate
Cost: $30 for 30 serving
Serving: 2 capsules daily.
When you know where your food comes from, you'll love these vitamins. Ritual prenatal vitamin describes not only the exact type of their vitamins and minerals (because there may be more than one option), but also the origin of each nutrient.
These prenatal contain an abundance (1,000 mcg) of folate (the naturally occurring form of folic acid). Also, each of Ritual's regular multivitamins includes vitamin K2, vitamin D3, vitamin B12, boron, iron, vitamin E, magnesium, and plant-based omega-3s. And the two capsules a day are intended for sensitive stomachs not to dissolve until they enter a part of your digestive tract that is less likely to cause vomiting.
Keep in Mind
These supplements lack calcium, and they do not fulfill the daily requirement despite having 18 mg iron. You'll need to concentrate through your diet on getting plenty of these key nutrients. To get your daily calcium requirements, you can take other supplements mentioned below.
2. Best with Folate: SmartyPants Prenatal Complete Daily Gummy Vitamins
Cost: $36.09 for 30 servings
Serving: 6 capsules daily (180 gummies)
In addition to a number of other important ingredients, including Omega-3, iodine, and vitamins D3 and B12, these SmartyPants prenatal vitamins include 800 mg folic acid per serving. The type of folate that they use is methylfolate, an active form of the nutrient that the body can absorb more readily than other types.
Those gummies are gluten-free and have no artificial colors or sweeteners, so pregnant women say they have a great taste. Most women who couldn't chew or tolerate other vitamins think this prenatal vitamin with folate is the best they can find. The daily dose is six gummies a day, which is quite a lot, but most of them say they taste so good that they don't matter.
Ingredients
- It comes in 3 Delicious Flavors: Lemon, Orange, and Strawberry Banana
- Non-GMO
- Omega 3 Fish Oil From Small Fish
- Folate As Methylfolate
- Vitamin D As D3
- B12 As Methylcobalamin
- Iodine
- Vitamin K As K2 (MK7)
- Vitamin E From Sunflower Oil
3. NATURELO Prenatal Multivitamin with folate, DHA, Natural Iron, and Plant Calcium
Cost: $39.95 for 60 servings
Serving: 3 capsules daily
NATURELO Prenatal multivitamin with folate addresses the increased nutritional needs of pregnant women, offering the most bioavailable sources of vitamins (including A, B, C, D, E, K2) and minerals (such as iron, calcium, and zinc). It contains vitamin D, for example, D3, not D2.
It is considered an acceptable amount of nutrients, especially folate and B12. Also, today one of the few prenatal that voluntarily changed their nutrient quantities to reflect the new requirements for the RDA allowance. The company that produces this vitamin shows its openness about the exact form of folate that is not provided by some other vitamin manufacturers. It's also in the form of a capsule and you know it's dissolving and the nutrients are really absorbed.
NATURELO Prenatal are food-based and have DHA. This NATURELO Prenatal Multivitamin with folate is also good for the vegan and is perfect for maintaining your entire pregnancy with extra health. You can even take the postnatal ones to help you supply more milk to breastfeed the baby.
Ingredients
- Natural full spectrum carotenoids
- 30IU of vitamin E with mixed tocopherols
- Vitamin K2 in the right dosage
- 4mg of B6 as P-5-P
- 800mcg of methylfolate
- 10mcg of methylcobalamin
- Correct amounts of all the other B-vitamins
- 200mg of magnesium citrate and 350mg of calcium
- 15mg of zinc amino acid chelate
- 18mg of iron
- 150mcg of iodine
- 60mcg of selenium
- 100mg of choline
4. Gentle Prenatal Vitamins with Natural Folate (Methylfolate), Low Nausea Formula.
Cost: $24.99 for 90 veggie capsules
Serving: 2 capsules daily.
We have done a lot of research on this supplement despite the low review we suggest this vitamin is among the best prenatal vitamin with folate. Many take these supplements just before they decided to get pregnant.
In addition, the products looked pure and contained folate. They also pointed out that the vitamin and mineral proportions were similar to the recommended amount.
Cost-wise, they seemed to be comparable to, if not slightly cheaper than products with similar ingredients that I mentioned in this post. Some took the DHA gel caps throughout their childbirth, beginning 2 months before becoming pregnant, and continuing to take them while breastfeeding. Gentle prenatal vitamins were easy to swallow (more convenient for me than many other brands ' large tablets).
Using these, for the first time in years, I had regular daily bowel movements. The more easily absorbed iron in these, like other prenatal, does not cause constipation. This vitamin is for every pregnant woman who has constipation due to an earlier disorder such as IBS, or due to increased iron supplementation.
Should I Take Folate Instead of Folic Acid?
Folic acid is synthetically made and folate occurs naturally. Approximately 40-60% of the population is estimated to have a mutation on the MTHFR gene, the gene that breaks down folic acid and turns it into a usable form of methylfolate vitamin B9.
To make matters worse, it is believed that if you have this mutation of the MTHFR gene, the body can be up to 80% less effective in processing the folic acid used for DNA methylation, the process of switching genes off and on. Without understanding whether or not you have this mutation, there is still a high chance that your body will not be able to use folic acid to its maximum potential and potentially put your fetus at risk because if your body can't convert folic acid into a usable form, it's as if you're not taking anything thing at all. It is better to opted for natural folate supplement and eat food high in folate.
The best prenatal vitamins reduce the risk that your body will not be able to use the artificial folic acid and instead have opted to use natural folate.
What to look for?
Pregnancy is a beautiful, wonderful time in your life, and your health and nutritional choices are critical building blocks for the health of your baby.
When you start looking at prenatal vitamins and other nutritional supplementation, be sure to look for products that use the most organic and bioavailable ingredients, and this is particularly important now as we are learning about the MTHFR mutation and how the body processes folic acid versus folate.
Related readings:
- What are the benefits of eating cooked mushrooms during pregnancy?
- Top 5 delicious warming folate foods for pregnant women
