Prenatal Care – Prevent Pregnancy Risks
Pregnancy can be an exciting and thrilling time, yet also an anxiety-inducing one for many women. Prenatal care helps anticipate, understand and minimize pregnancy-related risks.
Prenatal care includes regular health checks and screening for risk factors like high blood pressure, diabetes or chromosomal abnormalities. It may also provide counseling and education on healthy lifestyle choices.
It’s Your Health
Pregnancy affects both mother and baby, and prenatal visits help providers identify any problems that could cause complications. They also offer opportunities to take steps that could reduce these complications such as managing her diabetes or taking specific vitamins that protect against an infection.
At a prenatal visit, an expectant mother will undergo a comprehensive physical exam from her provider. He or she may check weight and height, listen to the heartbeat of their unborn fetus, take blood tests for conditions related to gestation such as anemia and gestational diabetes, monitor sonography to monitor growth and position changes and may perform tests that screen for potential issues like chromosomal abnormalities or birth defects.
The provider also inquires into a mother’s lifestyle and history during gestation. This discussion can include diet, exercise, use of drugs or alcohol during gestation, miscarriages or abnormalities during previous pregnancies as well as any possible risks that could impact future pregnancies.
During the pandemic, many expectant mothers were able to continue prenatal care by scheduling virtual appointments. Researchers are exploring whether virtual appointments can become a permanent replacement for individual doctor’s office visits; virtual appointments allow more time for education and support as well as allow women to bring partners or family members along for their appointments.
It’s Your Baby’s Health
Pregnancy can be both an exciting and stressful time for women, but prenatal care services help ease some of that tension by enabling providers to detect potential health concerns early.
Studies indicate that accessing prenatal care improves women’s health, birth weight and chances for a successful pregnancy and birth. Some states have implemented strategies to increase prenatal care utilization and subsequent birth outcomes through Medicaid expansions or targeted outreach and education efforts.
Health care providers conduct routine visits during which they measure a pregnant woman’s weight and blood pressure, take urine samples from them and listen to their baby’s heartbeat. In addition, they provide education, counseling and support services to assist the woman as she prepares for childbirth. When necessary they may recommend screenings for maternal anemia, serum markers of neural tube defects or chromosomal abnormalities as well as amniocentesis/chorionic villous sampling or amniocentesis/chorionic villous sampling procedures; in addition they offer nutritional counseling, initiated or maintained supplementations programs as well as breastfeeding support services during a pregnancy.
Increased prenatal care utilization has shown some impact on child health outcomes; however, its effects aren’t always dramatic. Group prenatal care services combining medical examinations and social service support may be effective; however, not every woman may find this the ideal option and further research must be conducted into it before making decisions based on this model alone.
It’s Your Future
Prenatal care is vital to women’s overall health, enabling healthcare providers to detect problems early and treat them more effectively. Women who do not receive prenatal care are three times more likely to give birth early, and five times more likely to die during or shortly after childbirth. Many pregnant women go directly to specialist clinics or women’s hospitals in their country for prenatal care from midwives or doctors while in other cases they receive care from general practitioners or certified nurse-midwives, who work independently of obstetricians.
Pregnancy-specific care includes medical examinations, screening for infections and genetic disorders, counseling sessions, blood tests and the provision of vitamins/folic acid supplements during gestation. In addition, it aims to provide breastfeeding, family planning and childbirth information, with its effectiveness determined by both quality of health care provided and compliance with recommended practices.
Some countries have successfully increased adherence to prenatal care through an array of educational and financial incentives. Other policy tools that promote early prenatal care must also be assessed thoroughly for their effectiveness, such as information campaigns or vouchers for free or reduced cost visits. Group prenatal care models that combine education and social support may also prove successful; states offer different levels of funding and enhanced reimbursement through Medicaid in order to implement this model; although, no nationwide data exists regarding its prevalence.
It’s Your Choice
Pregnancy can be an exciting time, but also an eventful period with rapid physical changes for both mother and fetus. To protect both, it’s vital that these modifications be monitored closely so any potential concerns can be identified early and treated promptly; thus it is imperative that women seek regular medical advice throughout their pregnancy.
At the first sign of pregnancy, pregnant women should visit their health care provider immediately and continue attending regularly throughout their gestation period to allow their doctor to detect any problems early and before they cause more severe pregnancy complications. Preventative screening includes screening for hypertension, gestational diabetes, gestational hepatitis C infection, maternal anemia, serum markers for certain chromosomal abnormalities as well as counseling regarding nutrition and labor and delivery as well as testing for social and environmental risks such as smoking or alcohol consumption which could compromise baby’s development.
State policymakers can play an integral part in improving pregnancy outcomes by providing women with access to affordable and high-quality prenatal care services. They can do this by creating and promoting group prenatal care models and setting billing codes to enable enhanced Medicaid reimbursements; enhanced Medicaid reimbursements help overcome transportation and cost barriers while offering incentives to healthcare providers who adopt group prenatal care models.
