Prenatal vitamins made Beth feel sick until the Monongalia County Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), with support from Vitamin Angels, gave her one she could take every day. Now she’s raising two boys who are learning they can overcome anything.
Beth’s days start early. Her two boys, PJ, 3, and Wally, 1, have never been great sleepers. “I guess it was my karma for loving to sleep in when I was a kid,” she says.
By 6:30 a.m., the family is up and eating breakfast together before Beth’s husband heads to school. Mornings bring the park, a walk with friends, or the pool. After lunch and naps, the boys play at the gym’s child care. In the evening, the family eats dinner together and winds down with Wild Kratts or old episodes of Reading Rainbow. Beth, 26, stays home with her boys and works part time as a speech-language pathologist. “Every day is a gift with the kids,” she says. “I learn more from my kids than I ever learned in school.”
Knowing what matters, and doing it
Beth’s first pregnancy came as a surprise. “That was very unexpected and awesome,” she says. “We weren’t quite prepared enough, but it was perfect.”
It was also hard. Beth was working full time and felt “super sick” through her first two trimesters. Her biggest support was her husband, who was both working and in school full time. “He still just made time for me,” she says. “Made me feel like I was loved and appreciated.”
Beth knew that prenatal vitamins and minerals matter during pregnancy. She studied early development in college, and an anatomy teacher taught her about the importance of starting folic acid early. Taking them was another matter.
“Every prenatal vitamin made me so sick,” Beth says. “You take it in the morning or at night, it doesn’t matter. It makes my stomach hurt, makes me feel ill. They’re like the size of horse pills.”
“It’s a lot harder to put into practice when you’re actually pregnant and when you don’t feel good,” she says. “You’re like, I’m just going to throw this up anyways, why am I taking it?” Through that first pregnancy, she took her prenatal vitamins only now and then.
“It’s a lot harder to put into practice when you’re actually pregnant and when you don’t feel good.”
Support, first thing Monday morning
When Beth’s husband was accepted to school in West Virginia as a late admittance, the family had about two weeks to get there. They packed up and moved. Not long after they arrived, they drove by the WIC office, and Beth’s mother-in-law had a suggestion.
“My mother-in-law said, ‘You need to go there first thing Monday morning,’” Beth remembers. “I hadn’t even really heard of that.” She went that Monday and signed up. WIC, the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children, has been part of family life ever since. “It’s been a wonderful community resource center,” Beth says. The family loves going to WIC events.
This time, things were different
When Beth was pregnant with Wally, the Monongalia County WIC gave her Vitamin Angels prenatal multivitamins. This time, things were different.
“I took them every day. I had no problems,” she says. She kept taking them while she was breastfeeding, too. Beth thinks of her pregnancy with Wally as her “pride and joy pregnancy” because of how consistently she took her prenatal multivitamins. Both of Beth’s births went well. Wally, she says, arrived in about 20 minutes.
Vitamin Angels provides multiple micronutrient supplementation (MMS), also known as prenatal vitamins and minerals, to WIC partners in West Virginia. Monongalia County WIC and Valley Health WIC together extend access across 21 counties, offering prenatal multivitamins that are small and easy to swallow, containing essential nutrients needed during pregnancy, including iron and folic acid.
The world is limitless
Beth has big hopes and dreams for her boys.
“My dream for my boys would be that they are able to have all the resources and all of the support and all the love to just be whatever they wanted to be, and to do whatever they want to do,” she says.
“The world is limitless, and we really try hard with our kids not to teach them the word can’t.”
When PJ says he can’t do something, Beth tells him he can. One week, his dad taught him a new word: overcome.
“Just teaching a three-year-old the word overcome, and then applying it to your life, that you can overcome anything,” Beth says. “My dream for my boys is that they know they can overcome anything.”
“My dream for my boys is that they know they can overcome anything.”
Nourish every beginning
If Beth had to describe motherhood in one word, she would choose magical. “All of those magical things that you loved when you were a kid, you get to experience 10 times over as a mom,” she says, “because you get to see your kids do it, and you get to play with your kids, and you get to show your kids.”
Her advice for someone who has just found out they’re pregnant is to slow down. “There’s 100 million things to worry about. As hard as it is, just try and live in the moment,” she says. “Every pregnancy is special and unique. So really try and live in gratitude for those moments. You will experience every emotion under the sun being a mom, but it’s a beautiful journey.”
Beth’s hopes for PJ and Wally reflect Vitamin Angels’ vision: a world where every woman and child has the health and support they need to thrive. That future starts at the very beginning, with proven nutrition solutions that a mom can take, every day.
