close
Health

All you need to know about pregnancy, including what to expect during prenatal care and the high-risk pregnancy

Your body goes through various changes during pregnancy. Therefore, it is essential to ensure you get the compassionate support you require throughout pregnancy and delivery by ensuring you attend all antenatal visits and give birth in a hospital. Health care providers like Dr. Albert Scott are focused on ensuring you receive the prenatal support, screening, and health education that will guide you through the journey to safe motherhood.

What is involved in pregnancy care?

Typically, pregnancy care does not only involve support and screening. During those nine months, preconception counseling helps your body be in good shape and makes it possible for you to conceive. It is also the time during which you discuss more genetic and fertility testing.

Pregnancy care after conception consists of standard prenatal screening and visits. During this time, the health care team ensures that you and your baby are healthy and that the fetus is developing appropriately. The team also helps you carry out and come up with a birth plan. The expert obstetrics specialists are also present to assist you if you begin experiencing some complications such as premature labor. The health care providers also provide postnatal care after delivery to ensure that you are healing correctly and that you and your baby are emotionally and physically stable. Similarly, the mother is also taught how to breastfeed the baby properly, and any questions she might have concerning the same are answered.

What should I expect during prenatal care?

In most cases, prenatal care includes a variety of services tailored towards your specific pregnancy. Therefore, you can benefit from this supportive and quality prenatal care, irrespective of whether it is your first or fifth pregnancy. It ensures you and your baby remain healthy for the nine months of gestation. Prenatal care involves regular checkups, treatment of common pregnancy illnesses, nutritional support, pregnancy problems and complications, screening tests for both the mother and the baby, and labor and delivery counseling and support.

Prenatal visits are usually scheduled once every month for the first twenty-eight weeks, once every two weeks for pregnancies between twenty-eight to thirty-six weeks, and once a week from thirty-six weeks till term. However, the prenatal visits may vary from one individual to another depending on your particular pregnancy and if you are at a higher risk of developing complications.

What is a high-risk pregnancy?

When the mother or the baby is at a higher risk of developing complications during pregnancy, the pregnancy is referred to as a high-risk pregnancy. Some of the concerns that can put your pregnancy at risk include multiple fetuses, health problems involving the baby, maternal age over 34 or under 18 years, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, and maternal health problems like diabetes, high blood pressure, or lupus. Therefore if your pregnancy is considered high-risk, you are required to have more antenatal visits.

Therefore, if you require quality pregnancy care, call or visit Dekalb Women’s Specialist today. Services will be provided irrespective of if you are planning to conceive or you are already pregnant.