I’ve also noticed that a few more foods are being enhanced with folate. However the supplements themselves are so cheap that I just think it would be great for them to be recommended to all women of childbearing age.

I will say that my experience of taking prenatal vitamins was that they could induce nausea where the pregnancy alone could not. I actually gave up on them quickly. In my third trimester I had an iron test and was told my levels were too low; I asked how this could be considering that I thought my diet was balanced. The doctor smiled and said that “everyone” gets a low reading at that point and it was no big deal. The supplements I was told to take were just so nauseating that I stopped them, too. When my child was born her iron levels were tested and found to be normal. So, I began to question this low-iron issue and found some pieces online (again, no sources) to say that perhaps the consistent findings of low iron in late pregnancy meant that there is a problem with what the reading is “supposed” to be. The main conclusion I read about was that it may be that we haven’t accounted for the mother’s more dilute blood supply with a viable fetus. I really would like to see more research done on this topic to see if we can move forward with better recommendations.

The main reason that I am anti-multivitamin is the “expensive urine” chestnut. It really is possible to smell vitamins in urine. I’ve witnessed my own and my child’s. Her formula had over 100% of the daily requirements of vitamins in it, and her wet diapers reeked of it. I’m sure that they put in extra as a precaution against times when a child may vomit a feeding, have uncorrected reflux, or become ill and not feed well for a period of time….but there is overkill especially once they begin solids while they are still on formula.

Nutritional supplementation is an industry, and the hard sell has worked on many people for sure.

http://www.freedavitamins.com/index.php?p=product&id=174&parent=2