Pre-Conception Care
Discuss how preconception care contributes to healthy pregnancy and positive pregnancy outcomes. Post answers as reply in the discussion forum.
The period of human pregnancy is a time of increased vulnerability for the mother and the child, considering the rapid growth and multitude of changes occurring to both. Thus, particular care and attention should be provided not only during the pregnancy itself but also even before conception, ensuring safe delivery and a health mother and baby.
Pre-conception care is defined by CDC (2020) as ‘a set of interventions that aim to identify and modify biomedical, behavioral and social risks to the woman's health or pregnancy outcome through prevention and management.’ It’s main objective and essence is to produce a healthy child and avoid short-term and long-term conditions associated with fetal and obstetrical complications. It seeks to change and improve modifiable factors that can impact a woman’s health consequently affecting the fetus’s development. By providing individualized and targeted care to expecting woman or females readying for conception, this type of care promotes positive pregnancy outcomes for both the mother and the baby.
The paper also highlights the role of the environment in risking the health of the pregnant woman and the developing fetus. It was reported that environmental factors are linked to 70-90% of illness acquired by expecting mothers. During this time of heightened vulnerability, both the mother and the baby are sensitive to environmental insults and profoundly sensitive to nutritional requirements. Thus, every woman should be adequately screened and educated prior to and during her gestation in order to eliminate possible risks and ensure optimal health for herself and her child.
The importance of adequate and proper nutrition for the mother and the baby is emphasized. After all, the nutritional status of the woman should be sufficient to support a health pregnancy. Nutrition is one of the factors that influence health status that can easily managed and primarily modified. With the knowledge and resources to pursue the needs of a pregnant woman, medical conditions such as cognitive and immune impairments, pediatric hypothyroidism, intellectual disabilities, cleft palate, and neural tube defects which stems from folate, iron, iodine, biotin, and vitamin B12 deficiencies, respectively, can be conveniently avoided. While vitamin D deficiency may result to gestational diabetes, preeclampsia during labor, pre-term births, and maternal postpartum depression. The published work highlights the role of nutrition before and during conception as the health-related impacts of nutrient inadequacy does not only last during pregnancy or delivery but also continues to negate the child’s health until adulthood.
Following, exposure to adverse chemicals such as cigarette smoke, teratogenic medications or illicit drugs should be avoided as such occurrence predispose the mother and the developing fetus to negative consequences. Drinking alcohol is also highly discouraged and considered unsafe due to potential and enduring health-related impact that this chemical may cause the fetus. Generally, chemical exposure before or during pregnancy ought to result to a wide range of health problems – autism, mental illness, metabolic syndromes, cardiac and neurological abnormalities, cytotoxicity, development of childhood leukemia, and lower scores on intellectual and neurobehavioral functioning. Therefore, it is essential that women who are and planning to become mothers are aware and knowledgeable of how exposure to hazardous chemicals may potentially perpetuate health complications that can impair their child’s development and quality of life.
On the other hand, degree-dependent exposure to electrical waves, such as electromagnetic radiation emitted by mobile phones may lead to observation of an increased fetal heart rate and decreased cardiac output. Expecting women located in residential proximity to areas with extremely low frequency of EMR should be cautioned as such exposure can result to the infant having decreased birth weight with dose-dependent increased risk of miscarriage and development of asthma. Simple actions and prerogatives taken before and during pregnancy pronounces healthier lives and safer births.
The nature of maternal-fetal medicine is multifaceted but it remains centered in ensuring the mother and the baby’s health; both of which and never just one of them. Despite the big leaps of technology and medicine, as more becomes known of the intricate biological and physiological workings of the human body, reducing mortality and morbidity rates for the mother and child, the impact of preconception care still needs to be established and strengthened. As evidenced by the work of Genuis and Genuis (2016), the positive effects of employing preconception care go beyond the duration of pregnancy and significantly impacts the mother and the baby’s health. Thus, preconception care should be provided and campaigned via public health infrastructures and programs to all women of reproductive age and expecting couples to ensure a bright outcome for the mother, the baby, and the family.