In this pregnancy I’ve been suffering hugely from twitchy legs. Restless leg syndrome it’s called, and ppl who aren’t pregnant suffer from it too. I’d assumed that it was just something that I had to live with, but then someone said to me that it might be magnesium. And I was at that stage of desperation where I thought anything was worth a try, so I looked at some pre pregnancy supplements I had in the cupboard to see whether I could take those.
Problem was that they were very high in B vitamins, so I trotted off to the internet to see what effect that would have in pregnancy. I couldn’t find safe upper levels, but I *did* find a worrying page that talked about vit b12 deficiency and how exclusively breastfed babies, particularly of vegetarian mothers are at risk of this occurring and developing neurological damage through it.
How come no one has mentioned this to me before? Ppl are always happy to go on about not taking too much vit A and whether as a vegetarian I’m at all iron deficient, but no one ever mentioned B12 deficiency to me 🙁
Made me want to run off to Doctoralia health care directory to track down an expert to soothe my somewhat shattered nerves. But I did go out and buy a pregnancy vitamin/ mineral supplement, choosing the one with the highest level of magnesium to see if that would help with the twitchiness. And blow me down, but it did.
Oh, and apparently you get various b vits in mushrooms, as well as eggs, milk and milk products. And as I’m not vegan, that’s probably where I’ve been getting it from. Perhaps I haven’t been irresponsibly risking my children’s health after all.