*SE10 Learn more about prenatal vitamins with Julie Sawaya + Needed

We have a very special guest on the podcast today, Julie Sawaya, who is one of the co-founders of Needed, a company that focuses on providing women with the highest quality of vitamins needed during the entire perinatal period.

Julie shares with Meagan the research behind Needed's prenatal vitamins and supplements. She talks about why you need a prenatal vitamin in the first place, the optimal dosage and forms of specific vitamins in pregnancy, how supplementing proper nutrition in the best ways can positively impact your entire birth experience, and so much more!

Use the code VBAC20 to receive 20% off at www.thisisneeded.com

Additional Links

Needed Website

What to Look for in a Prenatal Vitamin

Folate vs Folic Acid. What's the Difference?

Ryann Kipping: The Prenatal Nutritionist

Real Food for Pregnancy: The Science and Wisdom of Optimal Prenatal Nutrition

How to VBAC: The Ultimate Prep Course for Parents

Full Transcript under Episode Details

Meagan: Hello, Women of Strength. We have a very, very special episode for you today. We have our friend, Julie Sawaya, and she is the co-founder of Needed. If you haven’t heard us talking about Needed yet, go listen to the other episodes and get on Instagram. You guys, Needed is incredible. She is a mama of two young girls. We were just talking before the episode and her youngest is nine months. 

She is a lifelong nutrition nerd. I love that she calls herself this, a nutrition nerd. I’m a birth nerd. When we find ourselves passionate about something, we just nerd out, right? It’s so amazing. Julie grew up in a family of medical doctors and learned at a young age the power of nutrition and how it can influence or help. Julie went on to study the issue of nutritional access in college and got her Master’s in business from Stanford where she met her Needed co-founder, Ryan 

Of the most nutritionally aware of their friends, Julie and Ryan were shocked to realize that through nutrient testing, they were seriously major deficient in key nutrients. We don’t think about it, Julie. We just don’t think about this, I think, enough. We think we’re taking something and we think that we’re good. 

They found out that there was really much more needed for a healthy pregnancy. They dug into the research and they realized that they were not alone. 97% of women take a prenatal, yet 95% have nutrient deficiencies. Let me just say that again. 97% of women take a prenatal, yet 95% have nutrient deficiencies. 

Most prenatal vitamins just weren’t cutting it and Julie and Brian started Needed to create a new, higher standard for perinatal health. Working alongside a collective of more than 3,000 perinatal nutrition and health experts, together they have redesigned the products, education, expertise, and experience that women need. 

Welcome to the show, Julie. I seriously am reading this and I’m like, “Oh my gosh.” This is amazing because like I was saying when I was pregnant years ago, I did not pay attention to anything. I got the bottle. I took it. Check mark.

Julie: Yeah. No, I mean, I think it’s a problem. The core underlying problem that we’re solving at Needed is that women are nutritionally deficient in this life stage. It’s a problem both with the products that are available. Most prenatal vitamins are designed to meet just the bare minimum nutrient needs, not to set you up for optimal health, and it’s also an awareness or an education problem because, in some way, it’s a problem that you don’t know you have until you feel the effects of it. 

We’re told it’s normal to feel depleted, that it’s normal to not feel your best, to feel like yourself during pregnancy or postpartum. So many of the complications of pregnancy have a nutritional root to it whether it’s gestational diabetes or preeclampsia or hypertension or nausea even, or more severe nausea like hyperemesis. There is a nutritional component to it. Not to say that nutrition is a cure-all, but it’s a reasonable first step in supporting your body optimally. 

Meagan: It’s huge. 

Julie: What Ryan and I found when prior to starting the company is that despite how important nutrition is and yes, I am a lifelong nutrition nerd. Ryan and I are also trained nutritionists. It was truly and utterly shocking to us that we had these deficiencies but what we realized once we looked under the hood is that this problem is widespread and part of the problem stems from the fact that it’s so common for women in the U.S. to see an OB. I come from a family of MDs and I have huge respect for the medical profession. 

But most doctors aren’t trained in nutrition. It’s actually not a requirement in most med schools. I think somewhere in the range of 50% of med schools don’t require one nutrition course. The average OB appointment time in the US is 7 minutes long so even if an OB is trained in nutrition and has the intention to help educate their patients. OBs are generally very well-meaning. They’re just people who are constrained on time and with the curriculum as we like to say, the curriculum is flawed, not the people. 

But even if all of the stars align in 7 minutes, you can’t get all of your nutrition questions answered. What we hear again and again, the most common recommendation is, “Take a prenatal vitamin,” and then you ask, “What kind?” and then they say, “It doesn’t matter. They’re all the same.”

Meagan: Just take one, yeah. 

Julie: “Just take one. Make sure it has folic acid in it,” which I’m sure we’ll get into. That particular nutrient and nutrient form. But there is so much more to prenatal nutrition than vitamins and minerals. But even if you just focus on vitamins and minerals, it’s really hard to pick a prenatal. There are over 100 on the market. There is a vast difference when it comes to quality. The quality of the nutrients, the quality of the nutrient forms, and dosages. We spent over three years formulating our first products with a collective of health and wellness practitioners that study perinatal nutrition and looking at all of the available clinical research on nutrient dosages and forms, and what pregnant and lactating women need. 

The reality is that there are a lot of nutritional gaps. That’s where this collective of practitioners that are testing women’s nutrient and hormone levels every single day really, really matters to understand in practice what does it take to dose? What dosing of Vitamin D do you need to give your patients to be in optimal nutrient ranges? 

It seems like such a basic question, but no prenatal company had done that legwork to understand what’s actually optimal. 

Meagan: That is what I was going to say. There are so many things about Needed that I love. Honestly, one of them is how this company came about. It’s two women that found that there was something lacking out there and had a passion from themselves and had passion to share it with the world. That’s how The VBAC Link started. Myself and my old partner, Julie, same thing. We just found this passion so I love the heart that comes behind this company and then really what you guys have done. 

You’ve built it from somewhere where it was really mediocre if you could even call it that is incredible. Like you said, not only getting ingredients but the optimal amount. As I have compared in the past, there are so many out there that are even recommended on Amazon or wherever and they don’t even have the ingredients at all let alone that optimal amount. 

I am so excited and honored for you to be here today and be talking to our community because I think that it is so important. Like you were saying, it’s not that my provider had any ill intent to not give me that information, but it really was as I was walking out, he goes, “Oh, and by the way. Make sure to start a prenatal right now.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” That was it. That was it. I did. I found myself Googling it and found one. I was like, “Okay, cool. That one has some okay reviews.” I got it and I really didn’t know the impact that it was leaving or lack thereof. 

Julie: Yeah, totally. I think some of that comes from there is misunderstanding that a prenatal vitamin is for the baby. By and large, unless you have massive nutrient deficiencies, the baby’s going to get what he or she needs to develop properly, but often at the expense of your own nutrient reserves. 

As a mom of multiples, you know that oftentimes, women experience and understand the pain point more as a second-time or third-time mom than as a first-time mom because once you’ve been through pregnancy and birth and if you choose to breastfeed or pump, you can feel it viscerally how depleting that experience is maybe more so than a first-time mom that hasn’t yet been through it all. In some ways, it’s an experience that has to be lived to fully appreciate the problem probably much like the topic of VBACs. 

You go into a first birth maybe not fully understanding how one birth choice or one birth outcome will impact t