Trusted Information for Healthy Pregnancies
36 weeks
Why Prenatal Care Matters during Your Pregnancy
Apr 30th
It is important that pregnant women see a physician more often than just to confirm their pregnancies and to have their babies delivered. Quality prenatal care by an established OB/GYN or nurse practitioner throughout the entirety of the pregnancy is the best way to monitor a baby's growth and to identify any problems or complications early on, before they become a health threat to the future mother or her unborn child. During these prenatal visits, a mother-to-be is also educated on how to care for herself during a healthy pregnancy, and also how to manage unique circumstances-such as gestational diabetes-that can emerge during pregnancy. Statistics show that women who make regular visits to health care providers during their pregnancy have healthier babies, are less likely to give birth prematurely, and are less likely to have other serious pregnancy-related issues. A pregnant woman's OB/GYN will often refer her and her partner to helpful support groups or Lamaze classes. These health care practitioners also connect low-income pregnant women with referrals to much-needed government services, such as WIC.
During a normal, low-risk pregnancy, it is recommended that a woman make prenatal visits about once a month during her first 28 weeks; twice a month from week 28 to week 36; and up to once a week after week 36, according to helpful information compiled by the March of Dimes. Those with higher-risk pregnancies may need to make more frequent visits with their doctor.
Knowing the approximate due date is another reason prenatal visits are useful because this helps women determine how much time they will have to prepare for a new baby. Prenatal visits also provide an opportunity to receive an ultrasound to determine the sex of the baby after it has reached the appropriate point of development.
The education a woman receives about pregnancy and childbirth during prenatal visits is invaluable. Women will learn the important role prenatal vitamins play in the healthy development of the baby, how to manage their weight during pregnancy, and answer any tricky questions they may have about their pregnancy. Topics a pregnant woman may want to discuss with a health care practitioner during a prenatal visit might include: sexual activity during pregnancy, exercise during pregnancy, the risk factors associated with being pregnant as a teen or older adult, what changes to expect in your body during pregnancy, and how to manage discomfort during pregnancy.
This guest post is contributed by Jennifer Johnson, who writes on the topics of NP Schools. She welcomes your comments at her email Id: j.johnson19june@gmail.com.
Birth planning leads to surprising increase in premature births
Feb 8th
The rising trend of expectant mothers being involved in every aspect of planning their births has had an unintended consequence - a rise in pre-term deliveries.
"It never would have occurred to me or anyone I knew to think you had any kind of control over when the baby would come out," said Laura Crawford, who gave birth more than a decade ago.
Crawford, producer of the Kentucky Educational Television documentary "Born too Soon," said the increasing incidence of what is called late pre-term births is among the topics explored in the film.
Prematurity rates in the nation have increased quietly over the past two decades, according to public health officials. The premature-birth rate in Kentucky is 15.2 percent, and it's rising faster than the national rate, which is 12.7 percent. Kentucky has one of the highest rates of pre-term births, trailing only Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina.
Some of Kentucky's rise is related to some not-so surprising subjects, including the rate of maternal smoking (more than twice the national average), poverty and environment.
Other reasons are more surprising. They include the rise in scheduling births.
It's just within the last three or four years that the scope of the problem of late pre-term births - babies born between 34 and 36 weeks' gestation - has become apparent, said Dr. Ruth Shepherd, division director for maternal and child health in Kentucky's Department of Public Health. Roughly 10 percent of all babies born in Kentucky fall into the late pre-term category.
Ideally, she said, babies shouldn't be delivered before 39 weeks.
Often, there are legitimate reasons for early delivery, especially if the health of mother or child is at risk.
Increasingly, choices are made for reasons other than health. Delivery might be scheduled to coincide with grandparents' dates of arrival from out of town, or before Dad must ship out for Iraq.
There are several complicating factors, Crawford said. The documentary states that people tend to underestimate the impact of premature births, especially late pre-term births. They tend to overestimate how accurately a due date can be determined.
Shepherd said there can be real consequences. They can include immediate physical challenges, including underdeveloped lungs and long-term problems involving learning and behavioral disabilities, for example.
And even if a mother gets an ultrasound within the first 16 weeks - the best way to accurately determine the due date - the date can be off by two weeks either way.
Those two weeks can be crucial, she said.
"It's an issue of planning and control," she said. Planning is good. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that mothers have a birth plan. But, Shepherd said, "you can take it too far if you don't pay attention to the science."
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Omega-3 Supplements Don’t Reduce Risk of Preterm Birth
Jan 28th
Omega-3 fatty acid supplements are believed to have many health benefits, but the one thing they can't do is help women with a history of delivering their babies early carry their next child to full term, new research finds.
"The omega-3 did not add any benefit," said study author Dr. Margaret Harper, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Wake Forest University School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC. The study appears in the February issue of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Harper and her colleagues randomly assigned 852 pregnant women with a history of a preterm birth either to get a daily omega-3 supplement or a placebo beginning about week 16 to 22 and continuing through week 36 of gestation.
All women also received weekly intramuscular hormone injections of hydroxyprogesterone caproate, which has been shown to improve the chances of carrying a baby to term, Harper said.
Her team followed up to see which women delivered before 37 weeks. Full-term is defined as 37 weeks of completed gestation.
Delivery before 37 weeks occurred in 37.8 percent of those taking omega-3, and 41.6 percent of those in the placebo group, a small difference.
Prematurity is the leading cause of newborn death, the authors write in the report, and it is increasing in the United States. A woman who delivers one baby before term is more likely to deliver future babies early.
Harper's team decided to study the value of the omega-3 supplements after conflicting findings about the value of the supplements for women at high risk of premature delivery. For those at low-risk, she said, the findings seem to agree that omega-3 supplements don't further reduce the risk of preterm birth.
A recent large review of published studies found only one that showed benefit of the supplements in high-risk women, she said.
According to Harper, omega-3 fatty acids, when metabolized, are converted to much less potent biochemicals called prostaglandins, which make the uterus contract, than are omega-6 fatty acids -- also essential fatty acids but typically over-eaten in Western diets. Adding omega-3s to an omega-6-heavy diet, so the thinking went, might result in better chances of carrying the baby to term.
Omega-3 supplements, in other research, have been found to help heart health, to lower blood pressure and to reduce the risk of abnormal heartbeats.
But in Harper's study, she also noted that women getting omega-3 supplements were more likely to give birth to a baby with respiratory distress syndrome (RDS). While 59 babies (13.9 percent) of those in the omega-3 group had RDS, only 35 (8.7 percent) of those in the placebo group did. In other words, the omega-3 mothers' babies were 1.6 times more likely to get RDS than infants born to mothers taking placebo. It's the first time such a finding has been reported in clinical trials, the authors wrote.
"While the study's results showed no difference, there is early evidence that omega-3 fatty acids are beneficial for fetal brain development, so women should still consider taking them, in conjunction with their doctor's advice, despite what seems to be little benefit for the reduction of spontaneous preterm birth."
Source
Pregnant women develop emotion-reading superpowers
Dec 14th
Raging hormones during pregnancy prompt mood swings, but may also lead to a heightened ability to recognize threatening or aggressive faces. This may have evolved because it makes future mothers hyper-vigilant, yet it could also make them more vulnerable to anxiety.
Previous studies have suggested that a woman's ability to correctly identify fearful or disgusted facial expressions varies according to her stage of the menstrual cycle, with perception heightened on days associated with high levels of the hormone progesterone. Since levels of progesterone and other hormones rise dramatically in late pregnancy, Rebecca Pearson and her colleagues at the University of Bristol in the UK investigated whether the ability to read faces varies during pregnancy.
They asked 76 pregnant women to assign one of six emotions to 60 computer-generated faces before the 14th week of pregnancy, and again after the 34th week. Faces expressing happiness and surprise tended to be correctly assigned at both stages of pregnancy, but for faces expressing fear, anger and disgust, the accuracy rates were higher in late pregnancy.
This may increase the chance that the woman will spot potential threats to her and her fetus, and prime her to be hyper-vigilant once she becomes a mother. But it could have a downside. Pearson points out that people with clinical anxiety are also better at identifying negative emotions in faces. Pregnant women aren't clinically anxious, but "they might interpret negative or emotional things around them in a slightly more sensitive way", she says.
The finding builds on a recent study by Ben Jones of the University of Aberdeen in the UK who found that pregnant women - and women in stages of the menstrual cycle where progesterone levels spike - are better at identifying faces showing signs of sickness. "It's preventing them from becoming sick by interacting with people who are ill," he says.
The next step will be to examine whether pregnant women and new mothers are also more sensitive to emotional cues in babies' faces, Jones says.
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