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Is Your Blood Healthy?

Low-iron Anemia and Pregnancy

By Sonya Weiss

How common is low iron in pregnant women? "It's quite common," says Dr. Jennifer Niebyl, head of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Iowa. "We see people with a normal blood count, but they can become anemic because of the demands of the baby. The baby takes it from the mother's system."

According to Dr. Pho, what causes this to happen is periods of rapid cell division – like pregnancy – which require an increased iron supply to facilitate.

Like Leeper, Heather Truett from Brandon, Miss., experienced extreme fatigue but didn't associate it with anything other than the demands of being pregnant. But unlike Leeper, she had a craving for ice – called pacaphagia – a lesser-known sign of low-iron anemia.

"I craved ice and ate it constantly," says Truett. "I would go to Sonic or Guthrie's for cups of ice just because they had crushed ice instead of cubed. I sent my husband out late at night for a bag of ice from the store."

She found out she had low iron when her son was born. "I suppose I should have known when I started craving ice in the last month of my pregnancy," says Truett. "However, I wrote that off as dehydration because I had been sick with a stomach virus. After I gave birth, they did all the usual tests and my blood work came back and showed I was low in iron."

According to Dr. Pho, severe anemia has been associated with reduced amniotic fluid volume, fetal cerebral vasodilation and non-reassuring fetal rate patterns. "Increased risks of prematurity, spntaneous abortion, low birth weight and fetal death have also been reported," he says.

Gail Tully, a homebirth midwife from Minneapolis, Minn., points out another risk with mothers-to-be and low-iron anemia. "The risk is that she doesn't tolerate a bleed as well or clot during bleeding well," she says. "She'll be more depleted than a woman with strong blood who loses the same amount."

Want to see more?

• Are You Running out of Steam? What Every Woman Should Know About Iron Deficiency
• Are You Iron Deficient? A Simple Quiz Can Put You on the Road to Recovery
• Pumping Iron: Reduce Your Risk of Iron Deficiency Anemia
• Talk about it!

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