Maternity Care

Prenatal care and counseling:

Your doctor will be able to help you and your baby stay safe by scheduling these appointments. Even if your pregnancy is going well and you’re feeling well, it’s important that you keep your appointments so that any possible complications can be detected and avoided, or at the very least minimized. It’s also a perfect time to ask any questions you have about your pregnancy, such as what to expect during each trimester, physical pregnancy symptoms, and the actual birth. You may want to inquire about after-birth care for your baby.

A variety of checks, scans, examinations, and discussions will take place, including:

1. When the baby is due, what trimester you’re in, and what it means for you and your baby
2. Learning about your medical background, general health, and how any previous pregnancies went
3. Addressing any medication you’re on
4. Ensuring you’ve had a recent pap test
5. Ensuring your mental health is in good shape, and helping you if you have depression or anxiety
6. Organizing blood tests and screenings
7. Offering recommendations on healthy eating and lifestyle changes
8. Monitoring your blood pressure and weight and analyzing your urine
9. Asking you about your home life, job, and encouragement while feeling and measuring your abdominal girth and listening to the baby’s heartbeat. This is a good time to talk about family abuse if you are witnessing it.
10. Looking for any physical signs that could be troubling you going over your birth plan with you discussing what to do if anything goes wrong during the birth learning about antenatal classes
11. Advice on bringing your baby home, feeding them, and other aspects of child care

If this is your first pregnancy and you aren’t having any issues, you’ll probably have 8 to 10 appointments. If this isn’t your first pregnancy, you’ll probably have 7-9 appointments if your previous pregnancy was uncomplicated.

Depending on if your pregnancy becomes difficult, the number of visits will vary. If this is the case, your doctor will need to increase the number of appointments you have, as well as additional tests and scans.

2. High-risk pregnancy management

• A high-risk pregnancy may occur as a result of a medical condition that existed prior to conception. In other situations, a medical condition that occurs during pregnancy for either you or your baby increases the risk of the pregnancy.
• The following are several specific factors that may lead to a high-risk pregnancy:
• Maternal age: Mothers over the age of 35 have a greater risk of pregnancy.
• Lifestyle: Cigarette smoking, Alcohol intake, etc have higher risks during pregnancy
• Maternal Health: heart or blood disorders, poorly regulated asthma, and infections.
• Complications of pregnancy: Various complications that arise during pregnancy may be dangerous. An irregular placenta location, fetal growth below the 10th percentile for gestational age (fetal growth restriction), and rhesus (Rh) sensitization — a potentially dangerous disorder that may arise when your blood group is Rh-negative and your baby’s blood group is Rh-positive — are just a few examples.
• Multiple pregnancies: Women carrying twins or higher-order multiples face greater pregnancy risks.
• Pregnancy history: If you’ve had a previous pregnancy-related hypertension condition, such as preeclampsia, you’re more likely to get this diagnosis again. If you had a premature birth in your previous pregnancy or have had multiple premature births, you’re more likely to have a premature birth in your next pregnancy. Discuss your whole obstetric history with your health care provider.
• This type of fetal ultrasound — an imaging technique that uses high-frequency sound waves to generate images of a baby in the uterus — is used to investigate a suspected problem, such as irregular growth.

3. At prenatal appointments : Your health care provider can use an ultrasound to assess the duration of your cervix in order to determine if you’re at risk of preterm labor.

4. Blood Testing: A regular blood test can be used to identify whether you have an underlying disorder like gestational hypertension. This can endanger both you and your infant, necessitating prenatal monitoring and care.

5. Urinalysis: This test can detect excess protein in the urine, which can help diagnose conditions like preeclampsia.

6. Biophysical profile: This form of prenatal ultrasound is used to assess the health of an infant. It could also be an ultrasound to assess fetal well-being, or it could even include fetal heart rate monitoring, depending on the ultrasound findings (nonstress test). Cesarean and vaginal deliveries – Your doctor can recommend an emergency or elective c-section depending on the circumstances. If there are no contraindications and the labor progresses smoothly, a typical vaginal delivery or a vaginal assisted delivery may also be done. Painless delivery is a form of vaginal delivery in which a catheter is implanted in the back through which analgesic medications are administered on a regular basis, making labor painless while preserving the health of the infant.