Healthy Pregnancy: Calcium

Calcium is a mineral your baby needs for strong teeth and bones, and healthy nerves, muscles and heart. Calcium is also needed to help the blood to clot and for the heart to develop a normal rhythm.

During your pregnancy 13 milligrams of calcium pass through the placenta to your baby each hour! That’s a total of more than 300 mg of calcium just for the baby. . . and you need calcium, too. Pregnant women should be consuming 1,200 to 1,500 mg of calcium every day. Some doctors will prescribe as much as 2,000 mg of calcium per day due to studies that indicate a decrease in pre-eclampsia, a potentially fatal disorder that causes high blood pressure and kidney failure in the pregnant mother.

If you don’t get enough calcium during pregnancy, the calcium that the baby needs will be leached from your bones. One of the signals that you are not getting enough calcium is leg cramps. This lack of calcium during your pregnancy could cause health problems for you later in life.

Milk, especially skim milk, and all other dairy products are great sources of calcium. In addition, calcium-fortified foods and canned fish with bones, such as sardines or salmon, will help you get the calcium you need through your diet. Here are some foods you can choose from to make sure you get enough calcium.

• 8 oz. calcium-fortified orange juice
• 2 slices calcium-fortified bread
• 1/2 cup rice
• 1/2 cup cooked turnip greens
• 4 oz. firm tofu
• 3 oz. sardines
• 3 oz. canned salmon
• 8 oz. skim milk
• 1 oz. cheddar cheese
• 1 oz. Gruyere cheese
• 1 cup yogurt
• 2 cups low-fat cottage cheese
• 3 corn tortillas

Your prenatal vitamin should contain at least 150 mg of calcium. Depending on your diet, you may also need to add a calcium supplement. Ask your doctor about the type of calcium supplement you should be taking, as well as the dose you should be taking.