If you've decided you're ready to start a family, or are already pregnant, good health before and during pregnancy is vital. Here are some tips that will support you to have a healthy pregnancy:

Being active and fit during pregnancy can help you experience fewer problems throughout your pregnancy, birth and beyond. By keeping up your normal daily physical activity or exercise

(sport, running, yoga, dancing, or even walking to the shops and back) for as long as you feel comfortable, you are less likely to have issues in later pregnancy. Exercise will also help you cope with labour and reduce any negative impacts pregnancy may have had on your body after the birth. There are a number of exercise classes and groups that can support your fitness throughout your pregnancy, including aquanatal, seated exercise classes and online fitness groups.

Making sure you get the right vitamins and minerals by eating a healthy, varied diet will help, but it can also be difficult to get the recommended amount from food alone. When you are pregnant, you will need to take a folic acid supplement. You'll need 400 micrograms every day until the end of your first trimester (12 weeks).

The Department of Health also advises you to consider taking a daily vitamin D supplement, particularly in the winter months (from October to the end of March) when we don't get vitamin D from sunlight.

You can also ask your doctor, midwife or pharmacist about supplements. Your doctor may be able to prescribe them for you.

• Find out more about vitamins and supplements in pregnancy on the Start4Life (vitamins and supplements) website.

• If you're on income-related benefits, or you are under 18, you can get free vitamins while you're pregnant from the Healthy Start Scheme.

Consider the following while trying to get pregnant - as they can impact fertility, your baby's health and your risk of pregnancy related complications:

• Reducing alcohol consumption

• Giving up smoking

• Contraception, family spacing and sexual health

Screening

You'll have a number of antenatal appointments during your pregnancy, and you'll see a midwife or sometimes an obstetrician (doctor specialising in pregnancy). Some antenatal screening tests include:

• Screening for sickle cell and thalassaemia

• Screening for infectious diseases

• Anomaly scan

• Screening for Down's, Edwards' and Patau's syndromes

See the NHS - your antenatal appointments page for more information.

Vaccination

From 20 weeks, you will be offered the whooping cough vaccination. The best time to have this vaccine is from 16 weeks up to 32 weeks pregnant. But if for any reason you miss the vaccine, you can still have it up until you go into labour. This maximizes the protection to the baby in the early weeks after birth.

See the NHS - your antenatal appointments page for more information.

Pregnant women are offered the flu vaccine at any point during the pregnancy (seasonal) which will protect both mother and baby.