From Conception to Postpartum: Essential Blood Tests to Keep You Thriv

During pregnancy, my goal for my clients is for them to come out of pregnancy, not feeling depleted. Whether you’re a first-time mother or you’re pregnant with your fourth child. It’s important to not only the health of your baby, but also your own health, that you take proactive steps to ensure your body is well catered for during pregnancy, so you don’t get spat on the other end, feeling frazzled, fatigued, anxious and fall into a heap.

For any client of mine, I am regularly having them have their bloods tested, this frequency of testing, which I will divulge in a minute, has been adopted to avoid unnecessary interventions like iron infusions and to avoid post-partum depletion.

Before you fall pregnant it’s great to get a baseline of where your overall is sitting at. Bloods I recommend to test before pregnancy include: FBC, eLFTs, B12, Folate, Iron Studies, FSH, LH, Oestrogen, Progesterone, Cortisol, DHEA, CRP, ESR, Insulin, HBA1c, TSH, T4, T3, Thyroid Antibodies Testosterone, SHBG, FAI – these are to be completed fasting, first thing in the morning and 7 days before your expected period. If you have a 30-32 day cycle you’d tested on day 24 of your cycle.

If you want the low down on levels these markers should be, then grab a copy of my hormone blood testing guide – don’t just trust the word of your healthcare provider that everything is “fine” and there is nothing to worry about. Understanding your baseline is essential so you don’t go in blind, and understand what you need to work on or potentially keep an eye on over the course of the pregnancy and through post-partum.

For example, if you know historically your thyroid has played up previously, then this increases your risk for miscarriage, and also developing post-partum thyroiditis and/or Hashimoto’s or Graves’ disease post-partum. In fact, you’re most a risk of developing these conditions in the 12 months post-partum.

Once pregnant I often recommend using the following testing schedule:

7 weeks
12 weeks
20 weeks
26 weeks
35 weeks

Understand this is a rough guideline and things may change depending on what arises through the pregnancy, but this is the general framework I am using for my clients.

At each time stamp, I usually test the following

FBC
Iron Studies – please do not accept ferritin as an acceptable way to assess iron adequacy.
Vitamin B12
- Ideal levels >400pmol/L
Folate
- Ideal levels 35-45nmol/L
Zinc
TSH
- <2.5miU/L in the first trimester
- <3.0miU/L in the second and third trimester
Vitamin D
75-120 nmol/L