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Home › Articles › Eating For Two › Is Your Blood Healthy?

Is Your Blood Healthy?

Low-iron Anemia and Pregnancy

By Sonya Weiss

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A visit to her doctor showed otherwise. "During one of my prenatal visits, I had my iron checked and the result was low iron," says Leeper. "I was taking multivitamins rather than prenatal vitamins, so my doctor prescribed an iron supplement."

A Common Ailment

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."


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