Eating healthy is always a good idea—especially when you’re pregnant or breastfeeding. It’s also a good idea to take a prenatal vitamin during pregnancy to help cover any nutritional gaps in your diet or specific pregnancy needs. A prenatal vitamin contains many vitamins and minerals, with folic acid, iron and vitamin D3 being especially important. Read on to learn why!

Why do pregnant women need specific vitamins like folic acid, iron and vitamin D3?

FOLIC ACID helps prevent neural tube birth defects, which affect the baby’s brain and spinal cord. Neural tube defects develop in the first 28 days after conception, before many women know they are pregnant. It’s recommended that any woman who could get pregnant take 400 micrograms (mcg) of folic acid daily, starting before conception and continuing for the first 12 weeks of pregnancy.

IRON helps blood—in both mom and baby—carry oxygen. During pregnancy you need a lot more, mostly because the amount of blood in your body increases to almost 50% more than usual; you need more iron to make more hemoglobin. You also need extra iron for your growing baby and placenta, especially in the second and third trimesters and many start their pregnancy with insufficient stores of iron so supplementing is important.

VITAMIN D helps to regulate the levels of calcium and phosphate in your body. You need calcium and phosphate to keep your bones and teeth healthy. Not having enough vitamin D when you are pregnant or breastfeeding may prevent your baby from getting enough calcium and phosphate. This can cause him to develop weak teeth and bones, and in rare cases, develop rickets. Vitamin D can help you to fight infections, and may help to prevent diabetes.

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New Chapter’s Perfect Prenatal delivers all 3—these vegetarian tablets are specifically formulated with a pregnant woman’s needs in mind, with each daily dose providing essential nutrients. They also deliver organic medicinal herbs for the maintenance of good health, including rosehips, prunes, and broccoli.

And rather than delivering nutrients that are just synthetic chemical isolates, the vitamins and minerals in Perfect Prenatal are fermented with beneficial probiotics and organic vegetables (there are no live probiotics in these products). They believe the natural purity of organic ingredients is better for people and better for the environment and have long been committed to avoiding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) whenever possible.

The majority of their products—including their entire line of multivitamins—have been granted verified status by the Non-GMO Project, the only third-party verification agency for Canada. In fact, they are the first natural health products company to achieve this extraordinary depth of verification. Look for organic certification and the Non-GMO Project seal on all New Chapter multivitamins.