Vitamins are just to be catalysts for many chemical reactions in the body and the supply should be sufficient amounts during pregnancy.
Vitamin C plays a role in collagen formation, hormone synthesis, and proper immune function. Increase vitamin C intake also positively affects the absorption of iron – another nutrient critical for a healthy baby.
Because the formation of the nervous system occurs during the first few weeks of regency, before a woman know she is pregnant, all women of childbearing age are well advised to include at least 400 micrograms of folic acids.
Deficiency during pregnancy may lead to easy rupture of fetal membrane and increased newborn mortality rate.
Vitamin A is essential and a key nutrient for normal reproduction function, and it can be obtain by it eating green vegetables and deep yellow or orange fruits and vegetables.
It plays important roles in reactions involved in cell differentiation.
Taking excessive amounts of vitamin A can cause kidney and brain malformations in baby and therefore should be avoided.
However deficiency that occurs early in pregnancy can produce malfunction of fetal lungs urinary tract and heart.
For vitamin K, it usually present in small amounts in human milk. Fetal stores of vitamin K protect the infant as does the prophylactic dose usually given at birth, until the newborn receives sufficient milk from the mother and the child’s intestine matures enough to manufacture its own.
Altered maternal metabolism, the growth of the fetus and additional storage of some vitamins in the placenta, in particular vitamins A, B1, B2, B3, B6, B12, C and folic acid, increase vitamin requirements during pregnancy.
Vitamin requirements during pregnancy
