Welcome to Gaia! ::

10 Things To Know Before Getting Pregnant


This was taken from: http://www.drspock.com/article/0,1510,15753,00.html
(Sorry if the url doesn't work, I just copied and pasted it. whee )


While it may be tempting to just let nature take its course, planning your pregnancy can help ensure that your baby gets off to the best start in life. Since an embryo's organs start to form by 17 days after conception, many women are not yet aware that they are pregnant during the most critical part of fetal development. It is important to avoid toxic exposures, get appropriate nutrition, and be at your healthiest in those crucial weeks before your routine prenatal care begins.

Here are 10 things to consider before you stop your birth control method and start trying to conceive.


1) Are you ready to be a parent?

2) Folate prevents birth defects.

3) Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs are bad for developing babies.

4) Fitness is good.

5) Medical conditions and medications need a pre-pregnancy tune-up.

6) Your and your partner's gene pools can have important implications.

7) Do you know how to make a baby? (It's not quite as easy or obvious as you might think!)

8 ) Your age might affect your fertility.

9) If you run into trouble conceiving, fertility clinics offer hope to many couples.

10) Good prenatal care starts before you become pregnant.

~

1. Are you ready to be a parent?
Knowing that they'd like to have children one day is the easy part for many women. The hard part is knowing when the time is right to start a family. When you're faced with this decision, your health, financial considerations, the impact on your career, your willingness to shoulder the responsibility of being a parent, and your readiness to give up a great deal of personal freedom all come into play. If you're having a hard time deciding, try picturing your ideal life 10 years down the road. It might give you some clues as to what's really in your heart.

Whether or not you are ready for the joys and responsibilities of parenting, you also must take into account your relationship with the baby's father. Talk things out, be frank about your feelings, and be prepared to hear your spouse's or partner's honest opinions in turn. Finally, think about your support network. Having a baby is much easier if you can rely on a group of family and friends for practical advice, hands-on help, and the occasional pep talk. Getting these things in order before becoming pregnant can help you prepare for the inevitable stresses of adjusting to pregnancy and for the responsibilities that a baby brings to your family.


2. Folate prevents birth defects.
There is clear evidence that folate or folic acid prevents some birth defects. The necessary daily dose of folate, 400 micrograms, is found in a woman's daily vitamin, all prenatal vitamins, and any folate supplement. Since the fetal organs will be starting to form before you'll know that you are pregnant, this vitamin should be begun when you stop using birth control, rather than waiting until you have a positive pregnancy test. In fact, many experts now recommend folate for women of childbearing age who are sexually active even if they are using contraception, since birth control methods can fail, and many pregnancies aren't really planned.


3. Alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs are bad for babies.
Smoking can cause miscarriage, low birth weight, and prematurity. It is best to stop smoking before pregnancy, when it is safest to take medicines like Zyban or the nicotine patch that can help with quitting.

Alcohol use by a pregnant woman can cause her baby to have learning disabilities and behavior problems. Intermittent heavy drinking and daily drinking are both risky. As little as three drinks a day can cause facial deformities and brain problems. If you are a heavy or regular user, or have a family history of alcohol problems, quitting alcohol can require a treatment program like Alcoholics Anonymous, and is best done before pregnancy.

Drugs like cocaine can cause brain problems in the developing fetus. They also may cause premature birth and even fetal death.

Caffeine has been associated with an increase in miscarriage risk, although it isn't clear that caffeine actually causes miscarriages. Limiting caffeine to one or two caffeinated drinks a day is reasonable.


4. Fitness is good.
Relatively normal body weight--not too thin, not too heavy--is associated with the healthiest pregnancies and best fertility. Eating disorders can worsen during pregnancy. If you have anorexia nervosa or bulimia, it's best to get treatment for it before you become pregnant

Exercise promotes healthy pregnancy--shorter labors and leaner babies. Women who exercise regularly usually can continue their program during pregnancy. Women who are used to being sedentary can benefit from starting an exercise regimen before pregnancy. Talk to your practitioner about what kind of exercise would be best for you. All women who want to exercise during their pregnancy should talk with their practitioner to explore what types of exercise would be best for them.


5. Medical conditions and medications should get a pre-pregnancy tune-up.
Diabetes, high blood pressure, anemia, epilepsy, and other medical conditions can complicate pregnancy. Some infections also can be dangerous. For example, hepatitis B, rubella (German measles), and chickenpox are common infections that can pose serious risks to a pregnancy. Your doctor or midwife can help you decide if immunization (or re-immunization) is necessary. If you have a cat, consider getting tested for toxoplasmosis. And if you think it's prudent to get an HIV test, this is a good time to do it. You can prevent problems by being in your best possible health before conceiving. If you know you have any of these conditions or any other medical problem, a consultation with your doctor before getting pregnant can save you a lot of regret later on.

In addition, some medications can lead to birth defects and other problems, and these may occur before a woman even knows that she is pregnant. Even some over-the-counter medicines can increase the risk! Before conceiving, talk with your doctor or midwife about drugs that have been prescribed for you, as well as over-the-counter drugs that you take on occasion.


6. Your and your partner's gene pools can have important implications.
Sickle cell anemia, Tay Sachs disease, and cystic fibrosis are examples of medical conditions that are caused by recessive genes. That means that each parent may carry one copy of the gene, but have no sign of a problem. If the baby gets a faulty gene from each parent, though, serious illness can result.

Genetic testing before pregnancy can help you be aware of potential problems before you conceive. In the past, couples could use this to decide if they should have a baby together. Now there are new technologies available to help couples get pregnant with only the genetically healthiest embryos. In pre-implantation diagnosis, in vitro fertilization or IVF techniques are used to create embryos. The embryos are then tested for the genetic disease before implantation, and only unaffected embryos are chosen for transfer back into the uterus. This is only offered to couples who know their offspring are at risk for a serious condition.


7. Do you know how to make a baby?
While this may lead you to think, Well, duh,, you would be surprised how many questions I get asked about the logistics of conception.

For example, women often want to know how to get off birth control pills or other methods of contraception. Hormonal methods of birth control are best discontinued a few months before trying to get pregnant. While there isn't a medical risk to getting pregnant right away, the irregular periods that many women have coming off hormonal birth control can be confusing. You may spend a lot of energy wondering if you are pregnant when you aren't even cycling normally yet.

As far as the nuts and bolts of making a baby are concerned, here are some statistics you may not know: In general, if a fertile man and a fertile woman have sex regularly without birth control, the chance of getting pregnant is about 30 percent a month. About 80 percent will be pregnant in 12 months, and half of the remaining couples will get pregnant in the following year.

Many couples get stressed out from the pressure to have sex at a particular time. If you have sex a few times a week, there is no reason to pay close attention to when you are ovulating, even when you are trying to conceive. The chances are great that you will hit the right time within a few months. Do keep track of your periods so that you will know when you are pregnant and can start taking extra good care of yourself. Also, your practitioner will want to know the date of your last period, so that she can calculate your due date.


8. Your age may affect your fertility.
The sad truth is that a woman's fertility goes down after age 35, and rapidly decreases after 40. By 45, it is rare to get pregnant, even if menstrual periods are regular.

Many couples underestimate the fertility effects of being older and overestimate the genetic and medical issues. Once they get pregnant, healthy women in their late 30s and 40s are not at high risk of major pregnancy complications.

And now that I have advised you to really think about whether you are ready, I have to add this caveat. While there are always social factors that influence when will be a good time to get pregnant, if it is very important to you to have a baby, consider starting by age 35.


9. If you run into trouble conceiving, fertility clinics offer hope to many couples.
It can be very hard to be patient when you are trying to conceive. For younger women, trying for a year is reasonable, unless you already know there may be a problem, like your periods are very irregular, your partner had chemotherapy, or you had a serious infection in your fallopian tubes. Even if you have some risk factors for infertility, keep in mind that each month your chance of getting pregnant is almost always greater than zero, and if you wait long enough, your number may well come up.

In general, fertility specialists recommend that women under 35 seek help from a doctor if they aren't pregnant after a year of trying. By age 35, consider seeking help after six months, and by age 40, get help if you aren't pregnant by three months. This will give the specialist time to work with you before you get much older.

Your regular OB/GYN can start the assessment, or you can see a reproductive endocrinologist, who specializes in fertility problems.


10. Good prenatal care starts before pregnancy.
A preconception consultation with your doctor or midwife empowers you to learn about your health and how you can provide the best possible environment for your developing baby, from the moment of conception though birth and beyond.

What To Do If You Think You're Pregnant

If you think you might be pregnant, you need to get some money together and take a pregnancy test (see one of the posts below for information on when to take a pregnancy test).

If the results are positive, wait and then take another one, to make sure the first result wasn't a fluke, or the result of a mistake with the pregnancy test.

If they're both positive, go see a doctor as soon as possible. You should also go see a doctor if you get one positive result and one negative.

The doctor will be able to give you other tests (blood test, urine test, etc) to determine whether or not you are pregnant.


Copied from the above post:

[ Message temporarily off-line ]

An Overall Look At Pregnancy

All information and pictures taken from: http://www.wprc.org/trimester1.phtml

WARNING: There are pictures here which do not violate Gaia's PG-13 rule, but which some people might find disturbing, gross, etc (they're pictures of developing fetuses), but they're cited FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY. You've been warned - don't look if you don't want to, or if you don't think you can handle it.

~

First Trimester

2 Weeks: Fertilization- the sperm and egg join in the fallopian tube to form a unique human being. Forty-six chromosomes combine, which pre-determine all of a person's physical characteristics.
Still rapidly dividing, the developing embryo, called a zygote at this stage, floats down from the fallopian tube and towards the uterus.

3 Weeks: Once in the uterus, the developing embryo, called a blastocyst, searches for a nice place to implant, where it actually burrows beneath the surface of the uterus. The yolk sac, shown on the left, produces blood cells during the early weeks of life. The unborn child is only one-sixth of an inch long, but is rapidly developing. The backbone, spinal column, and nervous system are forming. The kidneys, liver, and intestines are taking shape.

4 Weeks: The embryo produces hormones which stop the mother's menstrual cycle.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Nikolita/4week.jpg

5 Weeks: Embryo is the size of a raisin. By day twenty-one, the embryo's tiny heart has begun beating. The neural tube enlarges into three parts, soon to become a very complex brain. The placenta begins functioning. The spine and spinal cord grows faster than the rest of the body at this stage and give the appearance of a tail. This disappears as the child continues to grow.

7 Weeks: Facial features are visible, including a mouth and tongue. The eyes have a retina and lens. The major muscle system is developed, and the unborn child practices moving. The child has its own blood type, distinct from the mother's. These blood cells are produced by the liver now instead of the yolk sac.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Nikolita/7weekfetus.jpg

8 Weeks: The unborn child, called a fetus at this stage, is about half an inch long. The tiny person is protected by the amnionic sac, filled with fluid. Inside, the child swims and moves gracefully. The arms and legs have lengthened, and fingers can be seen. The toes will develop in the next few days. Brain waves can be measured.

10 Weeks: The heart is almost completely developed and very much resembles that of a newborn baby. An opening the atrium of the heart and the presence of a bypass valve divert much of the blood away from the lungs, as the child's blood is oxygenated through the placenta. Twenty tiny baby teeth are forming in the gums.

12 Weeks: Vocal chords are complete, and the child can and does sometimes cry (silently). The brain is fully formed, and the child can feel pain. The fetus may even suck his thumb. The eyelids now cover the eyes, and will remain shut until the seventh month to protect the delicate optical nerve fibers.

~

Second Trimester

14 Weeks: Muscles lengthen and become organized. The mother will soon start feeling the first flutters of the unborn child kicking and moving within.

15 Weeks: The fetus has an adult's taste buds and may be able to savor the mother's meals.

16 Weeks: Five and a half inches tall and only six ounces in weight, eyebrows, eyelashes and fine hair appear. The child can grasp with his hands, kick, or even somersault.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Nikolita/16weeks.jpg

20 Weeks (5 months): The child can hear and recognize her mother's voice. Though still small and fragile, the baby is growing rapidly and could possibly survive if born at this stage. Fingernails and fingerprints appear. Sex organs are visible. Using an ultrasound device, the doctor can tell if the child is a girl or a boy.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Nikolita/20weeks.jpg

~

Third Trimester

24 Weeks: Seen here at six months, the unborn child is covered with a fine, downy hair called lanugo. Its tender skin is protected by a waxy substance called vernix. Some of this substance may still be on the child's skin at birth at which time it will be quickly absorbed. The child practices breathing by inhaling amnionic fluid into developing lungs. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Nikolita/24weeks.jpg

30 Weeks: For several months, the umbilical cord has been the baby's lifeline to the mother. Nourishment is transferred from the mother's blood, through the placenta, and into the umbilical cord to the fetus. If the mother ingests any toxic substances, such as drugs or alcohol, the baby receives these as well.

32 Weeks: The fetus sleeps 90-95% of the day, and sometimes experiences REM sleep, an indication of dreaming.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v600/Nikolita/32weeks.jpg
(it's a male baby, so be warned)

38 - 40 Weeks: The baby, now approximately seven and a half pounds, is ready for life outside its mother's womb. At birth the placenta will detach from the side of the uterus and the umbilical cord will cease working as the child takes his first breaths of air. The child's breathing will trigger changes in the structure of the heart and bypass arteries which will force all blood to now travel through the lungs.

~

Labor

Note - All information taken from: http://www.4woman.gov/Pregnancy/birth.htm


Signs of Labor

Remember the signs of true labor, so that you will know when you are having the "real thing:"

Contractions at regular and increasingly shorter intervals that also become stronger in intensity.

Lower back pain that doesn't go away. You might also feel premenstrual and crampy.

Your water breaks (can be a large gush or a continuous trickle) and is accompanied by contractions.

A bloody (brownish or blood-tinged) mucous discharge. This is the mucous plug that blocks the cervix. Labor could be at any time, or days away.

Your cervix is dilating (opening up) and becoming thinner and softer (also called effacement). During a pelvic exam, your health care provider will be able to tell if these things are happening.

Birthing Options

You may have several options available for where you will have your baby, including at home, in a birth center, or at a hospital. Birth centers usually can administer intravenous fluid, pain medications, and oxygen, and are able to repair episiotomies. They also have basic equipment to start emergency treatment if it is necessary. Hospitals have more advanced medical equipment to care for a baby whose health or life is in danger, and will be able to provide a cesarean section or epidurals, if necessary. If your pregnancy is considered to be at high risk (as in women who smoke, or use drugs, or have medical complications due to a known condition), home births are not recommended.

You also can choose what type of health care provider you would like to deliver your baby. An obstetrician (OB) is a medical doctor who specializes in prenatal care and in delivering babies in a hospital. A certified nurse-midwife (CNM) also specializes in prenatal care and labor and delivery, and can deliver your baby at the hospital, in a birth center, or at home. There are other types of midwives as well. Some women also choose to have a doula assist with labor and delivery. A doula is a professional support person who helps give physical support, such as advice on breathing, relaxation, movement and positioning during labor. Doulas also give continuous emotional support and comfort to women and their partners during labor and birth. Doula's and midwives often work together during a woman's labor.

You may also be interested in taking childbirth preparation classes, such as Lamaze, which emphasizes minimal medical intervention, teaches coping methods for labor and delivery, and helps guide new parents in the many decisions they will make before and during the birth process.

Managing Pain

One of the things you may be most concerned with is the amount of pain you may have during labor. Childbirth is different for all women, and no one can predict how much pain you will have. During the labor process, your health care provider should ask you if you need pain relief, and will help you decide what option is the best for you. Your options may include a local or intravenous analgesic (pain relieving drug), an epidural (injection which blocks pain in the lower part of your body), spinal anesthesia (used when the delivery will require forceps, or a pudenal block (numbs the vulva, v****a and a**s during the second stage of labor and during delivery).

Your progression through the different stages of labor and delivery will determine how quickly the baby is coming, and whether you have time to get to the hospital, birth center, or back home to deliver. Having information about your choices for birthing will help with some of the stress you may feel during labor.

Risks Of Having Children At A Young Age

This article was taken from: http://www.populationmedia.org/issues/women.html
The article focuses a lot on teens in developing (3rd world) countries, but there are some points about teens in the US who are having children too.

~

May 4, 2004

More than one million infants -- and an estimated 70,000 adolescent mothers -- die each year in developing countries because young girls are marrying and having children before they are ready for parenthood, according to the fifth annual 'State of the World's Mothers' report, issued Tuesday.

WASHINGTON, May 4 (IPS) - The 38-page report by the U.S. chapter of Save the Children, this year titled 'Children Having Children', says education for girls is the most effective way to prevent the problem, which is particularly grave in sub-Saharan Africa.

The report, which includes an ''early motherhood risk ranking" that identifies 50 countries where motherhood is particularly dangerous to young girls and their babies, says that nine of the 10 highest risk countries are in Africa, with the West African nations of Niger, Liberia and Mali topping the list.

"Access to education is key,'' says Charles MacCormack, president of Save the Children. "Research shows that girls who receive an education are less likely to have babies at a young age. Even mothers with only a basic education have healthier pregnancies, safer deliveries and healthier babies because they are more likely to seek health care services for themselves and their children,'' he added in a statement.

In addition, said MacCormack, mothers with more education are also more likely to send their own children -- including girls -- to school, and to use contraception to space their births at healthier intervals.

The risk ranking is included in the broader 'State' report, which ranks the well-being of mothers in the world's countries based on their health, education and political status.

As in the past five years, the Scandinavian nations of Sweden, Denmark and Finland dominate the top ranks, while the lowest-ranked countries are all found along a band of nations that run from Guinea-Bissau and Mauritania in Africa's west to the Middle East's Yemen, with Niger, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia and Mali filling out the bottom of the list.

The United States ranks number 10, behind the Nordic and West European nations, Australia and Canada.

The criteria used to rank the countries include six indicators of women's well-being: lifetime risk of maternal mortality; per capita contraception use; percent of births attended by trained personnel; incidence of anaemia among pregnant women; adult female literacy rate; and participation in the national government.

Four indicators of children's well-being are also factored in to the ranking: infant mortality rate; gross primary enrolment rate; access to safe water; and extent of malnutrition.

As in past years, the report underlines the huge gaps between the world's wealthiest and poorest nations.

Thus, compared to a mother in the top 10 countries, a mother in the bottom 10 is 26 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life and 750 times more likely to die herself in pregnancy or childbirth.

Similarly, in the bottom 10 countries, one out of three children is not enrolled in school, and only one out of four adult women are literate. Primary school attendance and literacy are virtually universal in the world's wealthiest nations.

The report found that access to and use of modern contraception leads to a decline in the deaths of mothers and children. In the United States, for example, where 71 percent of women use modern birth control, one in 2,500 mothers dies in childbirth and only seven out of 1,000 infants die in their first year of life.

In Mali, where only six percent of women use birth control, on the other hand, one in 10 mothers dies in childbirth, and one in eight infants dies before reaching the first birthday. Fewer than five percent of women use modern contraception in Burundi, Central African Republic, Chad, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Niger and Sierra Leone.

A mother in Ethiopia is 38 times more likely to see her child die in the first year of life than a mother in Sweden, notes the report.

While the situation in parts of Africa has remained disappointingly static over the five years in which Save the Children has published 'State of the World's Mothers', the group notes that several Latin American countries -- notably Chile, Cuba and Costa Rica -- are approaching the achievements in women's and children's welfare attained by the world's most developed countries.

The group also lauded progress made by parts of central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union, particularly the Baltic states.

The heart of this year's report, however, lies in the "early motherhood risk rankings", which note that in the 10 highest-risk countries, more than one in six teenage girls aged 15 to 19 give birth each year, and nearly one in seven of the babies born to these girls die before age one.

The rankings are based on marriage and birth rates among teenage girls as well as infant mortality rates for children born to teenaged mothers in each country.

Outside of the poorest nations in Africa, the ranking identified Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Guatemala, Haiti, Nepal, Nicaragua and Yemen as those nations where young mothers and their infants face the greatest dangers. Indeed, complications from pregnancy and childbirth are the leading killers of teenaged girls in the developing world.

This year's report includes stories of the lives of early mothers that help demonstrate that in some parts of the world, childhood for girls is extremely short-lived. In one case, a mother says she was married at seven, had sex at nine, and became a widow at 12.

An estimated 115 million school-aged children -- about 60 percent of whom are girls -- are not actually attending school, according to the report, which cited a series of other major findings, including:

- Each year, one in every 10 births worldwide is to a mother who is herself still a child.

- Girls in their teens in poor countries are twice as likely to die from pregnancy or child-birth-related causes compared with older women, while girls 14 and under face even higher risk.

- Children born to children are more likely to be delivered prematurely and die in their first month of life.

- Birth rates for adolescent girls in the United States are the highest in the industrialised world and are even higher in some remote rural communities than in many poor countries.

To deal with these challenges, the report recommends the U.S. Congress increase aid for basic education, child survival, maternal health and family planning programmes in poor countries and for in-school and after-school literacy programmes in the United States.

Globally, the report calls for minimum-age laws for marriage to be improved and enforced.

[ Message temporarily off-line ]

Pamphlet - "Did You Know That Alcohol Can Hurt Your Baby?"

This pamphlet was also one of the ones I picked up from the stand in a local mall. It's endorsed by the doctors, nurses and midwives of BC, and it's from the BC FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome) Resource Society.

~

How does alcohol hurt unborn babies?
Alcohol hurts the growing body and brain of a baby. These effects last a lifetime and cannot be cured.


What drinks are harmful?
All drinks with alcohol in them can hurt your baby. Alcohol is in beer, wine, liquor, liquers, coolers, and cider.

The change of hurting your baby is greater if:
- You binge drink
- You drink everyday
- You drink 3 or more drinks at one time

A baby or child whose mother drank during pregnancy can:
- Have problems thinking, seeing, hearing or speaking
- Be smaller than average
- Look different
- Be "hyper"


Will the baby or child get better as they grow up?
No. As these children grow, problems continue and sometimes get worse. As adults, many of these children are unable to live alone and are often taken advantage of.

Other problems include:
- Depression
- Alcohol and drug abuse
- Problems remembering things
- Trouble with the law


Can a baby or child look healthy, but still have problems?
Yes. A child whose mother drank during pregnancy can look healthy, but still have serious medial, mental and behavioral problems. This is called Fetal Alchohol Effects (FAE). FAE is as serious as FAS.


What is FAS?
Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a condtion only a doctor can diagnose. For more information contact your doctor, health department, or Motherisk.


What can I do?
The safest choice you can make is not to drink while you are pregnant. If you need help, talk to friends, family or a doctor, nurse, or counsellor.

- Get lots of rest
- See your doctor, nurse or midwife regularly
- Eat healthy food
- Reduce your stress
- Stop, or cut down your use of cigarettes and other drugs


Fore more information about the possible effects of alcohol and other substances on pregnant and breastfeeding women, please contact B.C's Alcohol and Drug Information and Referral Service at:
1 - 800 - 663 - 1441