Before we get into how we do our detailed prenatal vitamin reviews, there’s something that I want to mention about prenatals in general.
Since all people have different body types, body composition, and overall DNA makeup, not all prenatal products will work exactly the same for different people.
One particular prenatal may work great for me but not work well for you at all.
Or one may make you feel great but it makes me nauseous. As you probably know, that’s just how pregnancy goes!
As you research and use prenatal vitamins, keep in mind there are a ton of different variables that determine how well these things may work for different people.
Nonetheless, our goal is to tell you which products worked best for us—and which ones didn’t. That’s the whole basis for our ranking of the best prenatal vitamins.
If you find one that works great for you, wonderful! If not, don’t fret, there are many others to try.
Sometimes it takes some trial and error to find what works best for you and your unique body chemistry.
Also remember that all the opinions and reviews on this website are me and my team’s personal opinions and observations. We don’t do double-blind clinical trials with tons of participants completed over many years! And we don’t use any fancy equipment—we do our reviews the old-fashioned way (by actually trying them ourselves).
We simply buy ‘em, try ‘em and tell you what we think.
So now that we got that out of the way, let’s go over the exact process we follow with each new prenatal we try…
Prenatal Vitamin Reviews: The Process
When trying out any new prenatal product, we follow a detailed set of procedures to make sure that each and every product gets a fair trial.
To begin with, we actually go out and buy every product we test (we don’t accept FREE products from manufactueres/brands).
We pride ourselves in personally testing out each and every prenatal that we do a review on.
That’s quite a difference from a lot of other so-called “review” sites out there that don’t actually buy or test out the products they review. You’d be shocked to see how many of them actually do that!
So we form our opinions and ratings based on our specific criteria and not from the “marketing” information provided by manufacturers.
Once we get ahold of the product, we useit based on what the label suggests. That’s the only way to be fair!
While using each product, we keep notes on every aspect of what we experience, which includes the following…
What We Look For When Trying A New Prenatal Vitamin
Here are the 9 main criteria we use for our reviews:
- Ease of Use: The first thing we take note of is how easy the product is to use. How big are the pills or tablets? How easy to get down? How many a day do you have to take?
- Taste: Here we go over how the prenatal tastes. This will mainly apply to those that are a drink, powder or gummy.
- Ingredient Analysis: This one of the most important things we look at. What vitamins, minerals and ingredients are in each product is really key when using a prenatal.
- Results: This is hard to judge in a short time period but we’ll report how we felt and how our health seemed as we took the prenatal.
- Side Effects: Here we analyze any side effects we experienced when trying the prenatal.
- Price/Value: How much does this particular prenatal cost? How much does that work out to per serving? Is it cheap, average or pricey?
- Guarantee: Does the manufacturer offer a guarantee? If so, is it easy to use? How long is it for?
What The Overall Rating Means
After we’ve reviewed and tried a prenatal, we publish an overall opinion and assign a rating between 1 and 5, with 5 being the best.
Here’s what the rating means…
0-1.0 Stars: This product seems pretty bad for the most part. It doesn’t have the right ingredients, cost too much, is of poor quality, is difficult to use has no guarantee and/or produces side effects.
1.5-2.0 Stars: Not a very good prenatal but may have a good thing or two going for it. It might be affordable or taste good.
2.5-3.0 Stars: An average product that will work OK for some people. Probably has decent ingredients and offers some positive results.
3.5-4.0 Stars: An above average prenatal that has a lot of good things about it. It more than likely produces good results, is easy to use, has good ingredients and is affordable.
4.5-5.0 Stars: These are the best prenatal vitamins we’ve tried. We honestly think this product will work well for the majority of people who try it. It may not be the cheapest product on the market, but there’s a good chance it’ll be a be easy to use, taste good, have solid ingredients, produce results, and offer some sort of guarantee.
Putting It All Together: How To Find the Best Prenatal Vitamin For YOU
After each new product we try and review, we update our current rankings.
Our list of the top 10 best prenatal vitamins can be found here.
If a particular product doesn’t make it into our top 10, we still publish the review on our blog and film a YouTube video.
For reference, here’s a list of every prenatal we’ve reviewed.
Be sure to remember that we are constantly looking for any prenatal that we can get our hands on. And we update everything on this site whenever it makes sense to do so.
To stay up-to-date on everything happening with prenatal care and vitamins, be sure to check this website and our Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter accounts.
Lastly, if there’s a product you’d like us to review, let us know on Facebook or Twitter or send us an email to the address listed on our Contact Us page.
