Third Trimester Nutrition: How to Prepare Your Body for Postpartum Recovery

This article is part of the Nella Vosk Postpartum Nutrition & Recovery: Complete Guide for New Mothers — your complete resource for nourishing your body through every stage of postpartum recovery.

This article addresses a question that sits between the pregnancy nutrition cluster and the postpartum recovery cluster: what can you do in the final weeks of pregnancy — while you still have the resources to be intentional — to make postpartum recovery genuinely easier?

The answer is nutritional banking — and it is one of the most under-utilised preparation strategies available to Australian mothers.

By the time birth arrives, your nutritional choices during pregnancy have already shaped the resources your body has available for recovery. You cannot build iron stores in the middle of a bleed. You cannot establish vitamin D at six weeks postpartum on a winter evening in Melbourne. You cannot bank DHA after the baby has been drawing on your omega-3 stores for nine months and breastfeeding has begun.

The third trimester — approximately weeks 28 to 40 — is the last meaningful window to influence your postpartum starting point. Nourishing yourself well in this period is not just about pregnancy. It is about arriving at birth as resourced as possible, so that recovery can begin from the strongest available foundation.

1. Iron

Iron is the most consequential third-trimester nutrient for postpartum recovery. Up to 40 percent of Australian women enter pregnancy iron-deficient. By the third trimester, with nine months of foetal red blood cell demands and birth blood loss ahead, many mothers’ stores are already critically low. Ask your GP for a ferritin test (not just haemoglobin) in the third trimester. If ferritin is below 30μg/L, supplementation under GP guidance can meaningfully improve your starting point before birth.

The practical difference: a mother arriving at birth with ferritin of 60μg/L has a significantly better postpartum energy and recovery trajectory than one arriving at 15μg/L, even if their haemoglobin numbers look similar.

2. Omega-3 DHA

The final trimester is when foetal brain development is most rapid and DHA transfer is at its peak. By birth, many mothers’ DHA stores are substantially depleted. Establishing oily fish as a regular habit in the third trimester — two to three serves per week of salmon, sardines, or mackerel — supports foetal brain development and provides the best available starting point for maternal DHA at the moment breastfeeding begins.

3. Choline

Choline requirements are 440mg per day in the third trimester, rising to 550mg per day during breastfeeding. Australian dietary surveys show most women fall well below this. Two to three whole eggs daily — yolk included — is the most practical path to meaningful choline intake in the final weeks of pregnancy.

4. Vitamin D

Vitamin D deficiency is common across all Australian latitudes, particularly in autumn and winter months. Addressing it before birth means arriving at the postpartum period with better energy, immune function, and mood regulation. Request a 25-OH vitamin D test in the third trimester if you have not had one recently.

5. Magnesium

Magnesium supports sleep quality, muscle function, and cortisol regulation — all under significant pressure in the third trimester and postpartum period. Magnesium glycinate 200–400mg in the evening is safe in the third trimester (discuss with your GP) and supports sleep quality in late pregnancy while establishing the habit for postpartum use.

For what to eat once your baby has arrived, the Postpartum Nutrition & Recovery: Complete Guide for New Mothers is your starting point. For the postpartum pantry that continues from what you stocked in pregnancy, see the postpartum pantry checklist.

Browse the Nourish Mama postpartum recovery range for daily nourishment formulated by a Certified Postpartum Nutrition Professional for postpartum recovery.