Anemic :-p

I had low iron in the beginning and it keeps dropping. She also told me I could get iron from fish and nut products as well. I try to have beets which are great source of iron. Make sure you drink extra water with taking iron. It is so hard on the stomach. Iron overdose can be serious. I would contact a pharmacist or your doctor and discuss how much extra iron you need. I take my prenatal vitamin and 300 mg iron also. There are certain types of iron to help bring your levels up. I also take Vit B12 to help the red blood cell formation. You should really take with your doctor.

I've always just gone ahead and started Iron pills when I get pregnant. With every one I've been anemic. I'm sure stress could factor in, as well as the lack of sleep. But the best thing you could do is get back to taking your prenatals like you're supposed to. But if you are this concerned...why not just give your Dr a call?

I'm sorry, I know how it feels to have levels come back abnormal, and it is NO fun! (Mine being my platelets, though). I think the best thing to do is what you're already doing-up your iron in ways that you can, and leave the rest alone. Let your doctor decide if further intervention is necessary. Good luck on getting the number up! :)

current weight: 140.8

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120

It seems like if the doctor was concerned, when they told you the results they would have advised you to take iron supplements. I have to take them. They're pretty harsh on the digestive system (in a few ways), but they supposedly help. Of course, I haven't felt awake in days....

I can't speak to the self-diagnosis part, but I did have low iron earlier in my pregnancy & was just re-checked last week and am now within the normal range (yay). There are other foods you can eat besides red meat to get more iron. I focused on spinach, prunes, & eggs, as well as switched my morning cereal occasionally to a higher-iron fortified one and tried to add more beans to my diet (although not quite as successfully as I'd hoped).

There is an article on SP about iron-rich foods. Here's a link to one from webMD, too: www.webmd.com/diet/features/top-10-i
ro
n-rich-foods

My daily affirmations also include:
"My iron levels are high.
My hemoglobin levels are high."

I always though they sounded silly.....but I'm not questioning it anymore.

Good luck!

Technical details: In my first blood test (11 weeks or so), my red blood cell count came out a little low-- 3.71 when the range is 3.8-5.1, and everything else was ok. I just got back my results from my 26 week tests today, and now my red blood cell count is a little lower (3.56) and I'm also just above the range for white blood cell count (11.1 when the range is 4.5 to 11), and a little below for hemoglobin, hematocrit, and the percent of lympocytes, and a little high for neutrophils.

Basically I think this all means the same thing--- my red blood cell count is a little low and my white blood cell count is a little high, i.e., anemia, right? (Hehe, a google search also suggested helpfully that I could have cancer or eclampsia, but I feel pretty healthy and I have no signs of pre-eclampsia, let alone eclampsia, so I think I'm ok!) I've been a little anemic on and off my whole life, but I'd really been making an effort to eat more red meat since my first blood test so it kind of sucks that these results are getting worse. I will admit that I haven't been taking extra iron supplements consistently, though my prenatal vitamin (which like an idiot I forgot to take yesterday and the day before) is supposed to contain more than my max daily value of iron.

I'm not supposed to meet with my doctor until August 8th, so I'm just wondering if I should be worried about these results or what you would suggest to help raise my iron. Did anyone with a low count early in pregnancy actually turn it around? Can I please blame all of this on the stress and sleep deprivation of staying up late to watch the US women's world cup team lose last night??

Still waiting on the results of that lovely glucose tolerance test...

Maya

current weight: 130.0

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