We health care providers sometimes forget to consider prescriptive costs – did your OB or midwife start you out with samples, by any chance? The pharmaceutical companies love to give us free samples of their newest products with hopes that we’ll prescribe it for our patients to continue once they’ve tried the samples. Medications that have generic versions available are hardly ever available in our sample cupboard, because the companies know that they won’t profit from refills at the pharmacy because of of generic substitution .
The main difference between OTC prenatal vitamins and the prescriptive kind has generally been the amount of folic acid. OTCs have 400mcg, prescriptives have 1,000mcg. The latest trend in prescriptives is boutique type vitamins. There are some with DHA, an omega 3 that might help with fetal brain development, some that are chewable for women who have trouble swallowing pills, some with a stool softener built in for women with constipation, and so on.
Most of my patients take an OTC prenatal vitamin. If a pregnant woman can’t tolerate pregnancy vitamins at all they cause severe nausea for some, we recommend flintstones type chewable vitamin plus a separate folic acid pill.