There is a consensus that a continuum of care needs throughout the pregnancy stage up until one's full growth development is the condition to reduce maternal mortality and morbidity. However, during the early years, the realization of preconception care was still out of the blue, thus leaving a wide gap in the care provided. In fact, this idea remained questionable if it belonged to the standard of care within the spectrum of maternal health services. Only during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we have witnessed exceptional advancement in maternal-fetal medicine.
When we talk about preconception care, the first thing that comes to mind is how a mother follows certain actions before conception or early in pregnancy to optimize health outcomes. Yet what one needs to understand is how this subject is a combined effort from both the parents and the medical/healthcare ally. Basically, a set of interventions are given to identify genetic predestination and modifiable factors that risk fetal development. The aim is to manage these determinants as early as possible, preventing maternal mortality and morbidity.
For instance, one understands how a certain vitamin deficiency may lead to short- and long-term gestational defects [vitamins and minerals requirements increase throughout this period]. Thus, women in the preconception period should be educated about dietary sources to acquire sufficiency throughout their pregnancy. Let's take this as another example: recent studies prove evidence on how maternal electromagnetic exposure emitted by mobile phones may lead to an increased fetal heart rate and decreased cardiac output (Rekz et. al, 2008) while close residential proximity to sources of extremely low-frequency EMR in pregnancy is associated with a significant decrease in birth weight (Vocht and Lee, 2014). Understanding these modifiable environmental determinants and iterating this fact to women could diminish the repercussion.
Indeed, the heightening evidence calls that preconception care increases the health and well-being of women and couples and improves subsequent pregnancy and child health outcomes. Although preconception care cannot replace efforts needed across the life course to promote the health of babies, children, adolescents, and adults as individuals in their own right, it could serve as a complementary to the pre-existing standard of care. Doing so will most likely result in a healthy and positive pregnancy outcome!
Genuis, S. J., & Genuis, R. A. (2016). Preconception Care: A New Standard of Care within Maternal Health Services. BioMed Research International, 2016, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.1155/2016/6150976