When I saw my GP to green light Operation Baby we discussed my being in optimum health as the most important thing to focus on before TTC. In my mind there are 3 parts to that:

1. Lose weight via. a healthy balanced diet (current BMI 31 – need to get to 25)
2. Make sure I’m getting all the vitamins & minerals I need up to optimal baby-making levels
3. Relax! Try to keep stress levels down

Point 1 is going to be discussed on this blog at length since losing weight is going to be the hardest and take the longest, so I thought I’d start off with a post about the first active (and quickest!) step I’ve taken… choosing my vitamin supplements…

After reading @CrazyStorkLady‘s witty post about going a bit crazy in the pregnancy isle at the chemists (pharmageddon! Lol!) I steeled myself to be focused and purposeful in choosing my vitamins – research online first, make a plan, get to pharmacy, in and out quickly no faffing about looking at other stuff.

So I dutifully perused TTC blogs, articles on women’s health websites, and manufacturers’ pages extolling the wonders of their preconception and pregnancy vitamins. I umm’d and ah’d and finally picked one. Part one of my plan completed I headed off to Boots.

So I headed in and with laser focus went straight to the vitamin section and… they didn’t have my painstakingly carefully selected choice! Now I’d have to decide all over again with all these options in front of me, including some I hadn’t come across during my internet research.

After half an hour (OK, I’ll be honest, 40-45 minutes) of comparing and mind changing I ended up not opting for a specialist pre-pregnancy product after all. The prices!!! It seems that the word “pregnancy” has a similar effect to the word “wedding” – as soon as you put it in front of a product the price shoots up!

After all my comparing I decided that the only thing most normal daily multivitamins are missing is the 400 micrograms on folic acid (and possibly the optimal levels of Vitamin D, iron and zinc depending on brand), and the only “potentially harmful” thing they include is Vitamin A. As I’m around 6 months from actually trying to introduce sperm to egg I decided that, at this point, Vitamin A wasn’t going to do me any harm; and it’s much simpler to get the folic acid separately. So I opted for a multivitamin, folic acid, and cod liver oil (to get in some omega 3 and to make use of the 3 for 2 offer 🙂 ). I already get Vitamin D + calcium on prescription from my GP as I had a Vitamin D deficiency (this is England, most people do!). When I switch to actively TTC then I may re-evaluate these choices, but for now I think this’ll work.

A note on brand – after comparing what was on offer I decided to go with Boots’ own brand vitamins. Not only were they a lot cheaper; they also had higher levels of some of the key vitamins I was looking for than some of the big name brands.

So I went home and happily filled my pill box for the week ahead including my new additions with pride, and I took my first doses last night. I was pleased that the multivitamin tablet isn’t HUGE, and I’m really surprised that the highly exhalted folic acid tablet is so small! I guess they do say good things come in small packages…