Most people think that conception is the simple, no-planning-necessary part of having a baby. That’s not quite right. Doctors say that if you want to ensure a healthy baby, you should start planning months before conception by eating a diet jam-packed with fruits and vegetables. That little fertilized egg has a long way to go in nine months. It has to grow and divide. Its cells specialize to become bones, nerves, and other essential tissues. What helps make all of this happen without a hitch? Nutrients.
Sure, you can take other actions to protect a developing fetus. Avoid x-rays and environmental toxins, try to stay free of infections—especially German measles—and check with your doctor before taking any drugs. Apart from that, however, nutrients are your best insurance. They’re the stuff that cells use to build your baby.
Both the contributors and the detractors deserve special attention in this baby-building process. On the plus side, you need folic acid. On the minus side, make sure that you don’t get too much of potentially harmful nutrients such as vitamin A.
Plan Ahead
Around 1965, researchers began to suspect that a deficiency of folic acid, a B vitamin, during pregnancy could lead to central nervous system disorders called neural tube defects in the developing fetus. It seems that a high percentage of women who were taking anticonvulsant drugs (which interfere with the way your body incorporates folic acid) were giving birth to babies with these serious defects.
In a fetus, the neural tube is just a fold of tissue. When the baby is fully developed, that tissue becomes the spinal cord and brain. A baby whose neural tube doesn’t close at the top is born with little or no brain and rarely lives more than a few days. A baby whose tube doesn’t close at the bottom is born with spina bifida, a condition that can cause paralysis of the lower body because the vertebrae don’t join properly to protect the spinal cord.
| Protecting the Unborn from Overdose Making sure that you get the right amounts of nutrients is only half the battle when it comes to producing a healthy baby. The other 50 percent is avoiding the things that cause birth defects. One caution to be aware of concerns vitamin A—specifically, that you shouldn’t take daily doses of supplemental vitamin A that exceed 5,000 international units or more. These levels, which are almost impossible to get from food alone, have been shown to cause various types of birth defects, says Aubrey Milunsky, M.D., professor of human genetics, pediatrics, and pathology and director of the center for human genetics at Boston University School of Medicine. If you are currently supplementing with vitamin A, talk with your obstetrician about it to ensure that you’re not taking an amount that’s dangerous for your baby. “I tell my patients not to take anything that they don’t absolutely have to,” says Priscilla Evans, N.D., a naturopathic doctor at the Community Wholistic Health Center in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. This includes herbs. It’s a very complex matter, she says. Herbs that are safe to take during the second trimester, for instance, might not be safe during the first, when all of the baby’s organs are being formed. “You should consult a qualified practitioner of herbal medicine before using herbs during pregnancy,” she says. |
Nearly 30 years after the first studies, neural tube defects still affected more than 4,000 babies born in the United States every year. We now know the cause, however, and have learned that many of these birth defects can be prevented. Studies have shown that getting adequate amounts of folic acid can protect infants.
"Folic acid is the most important supplement to take to avoid birth defects," says Aubrey Milunsky, M.D., professor of human genetics, pediatrics, and pathology and director of the center for human genetics at Boston University School of Medicine.
Studies have shown that women who take a multivitamin that contains folic acid while pregnant also have lower risks of delivering babies with cleft lip and palate—a split in the lip or in the roof of the mouth that occurs during fetal development. Multivitamins with folic acid also lower risk for a variety of heart defects, limb deficiencies, and urinary tract defects.
The catch is that folic acid is most important from the time of conception through the first six weeks—a time when many women don’t yet realize that they’re pregnant. If you are thinking about getting pregnant or are even of childbearing age, you should consider taking 400 micrograms of folic acid a day, says Dr. Milunsky.
Only about 25 percent of women of childbearing age get that daily amount of folic acid a day, according to the Council for Responsible Nutrition in Washington, D.C. Folic acid is essential for the DNA production that occurs during cell division.
Most prenatal vitamins contain enough folic acid, along with a host of other nutrients to support the mother and fetus, says Dr. Milunsky. Again, though, women often don’t go to their doctors and start taking prenatal vitamins until after the crucial six-week period of organ formation has passed, he says.
Make Multivitamins a Must
"A good multivitamin is essential for pregnant women," says Willow Moore, D.C., N.D., a chiropractor and naturopathic doctor in Owings Mills, Maryland. "Probably, though, taking the full dose once a day isn’t the best approach. I recommend that pregnant women take prenatal multi vitamins that come in divided doses to be taken throughout the day." Your body is better able to absorb the nutrients if you take them in several smaller doses rather than in one large dose.
Researchers can’t yet say exactly which vitamins within a multivitamin do the beneficial work. Apart from the effect of folic acid, there’s some evidence to suggest that other B vitamins play vital roles. But we lack specific evidence. That’s understandable, notes Dr. Moore, since researchers would never deprive pregnant women of nutrients that might prevent birth defects in order to study the effects of deficiency.
