We have a list of five important things a mother can do before becoming pregnant so let’s go through these starting with folic acid what is it and why is it important yes so folic acid is a vitamin essentially that helps sort of control the metabolism and the growth of a fetus very early on and it actually has important consequences for how the spinal cord and the brain develop and those actually develop really early on in pregnancy like in the first three to four weeks so it’s important to have that on board so we also tell patients to actually start taking prenatal vitamins while they’re trying to become pregnant so that way they already have that and then other important things obviously quitting toxic substances like alcohol and drug use making sure vaccines are current is also very important because there are some vaccinations that you actually cannot receive when you’re pregnant controlling medical conditions like we mentioned you want to enter the pregnancy as optimally healthy as you can and discussing any medications that you’re taking with your doctor because some things might need to be switched when you’re pregnant because you shouldn’t be taking them when you’re pregnant what about people who say it’s okay to have a glass of wine in the third trimester we’re never in pregnancy.