What does prenatal care include?

Prenatal care covers the full cycle of care from pregnancy confirmation to delivery. It is not limited to the routine prenatal check-ups that everyone thinks of, but includes systematic care in four major dimensions: physiological indicator monitoring, daily diet and rest adjustments, emotional and psychological counseling, and delivery preparation.

I have been in the obstetrics clinic for nearly 6 years. I have a deep impression of a 22-week-pregnant mother. She felt that prenatal care was nothing extra and she felt that there was nothing extra to do about prenatal care. She kept her hands on iced milk tea every day, ate heavy oil and spicy barbecue for supper, and always stayed up until one or two o'clock to catch up on variety shows. As a result, during the sugar screening, her fasting blood sugar was 0.3 higher than the critical value, and because of rest She often had hard and tight false contractions. When she came to us with the report, she almost cried. She said that she thought everything would be fine as long as she passed the prenatal check-up. Later, she adjusted her diet and rest according to our nursing guidance, replacing milk tea with unsweetened coconut water, replacing her late-night snack with steamed corn and eggs, and going to bed early for half an hour every day. After two weeks, everything returned to normal during the review.

Speaking of this, many people may think, do we have to strictly follow the online pregnancy standards and not make any mistakes? In fact, no, there are different opinions on many details of prenatal care. For example, whether you can exercise during pregnancy. Many elderly people in the family always say that you have to lie still during pregnancy, and they are afraid of moving the fetal air if you move at all. For high-risk factors such as childbirth history, taking a walk every day and doing some low-intensity yoga for pregnant women can control weight gain and reduce the risk of perineal tears and dystocia. At this time, you don’t have to worry about who is right and who is wrong. Just follow your own body feelings. If you feel tired after walking two steps, it’s okay to rest more.

You may not have noticed when you usually go to prenatal check-ups. In addition to regular physiological monitoring such as listening to your fetal heart rate, doing B-ultrasound, and checking blood and urine, the doctor will casually ask you whether your legs have been swollen recently, whether you can sleep well at night, and whether you feel chest tightness and palpitations. He may even help you adjust the dosage of iron and calcium supplements, and tell you what to eat more and what to touch less. These are all part of prenatal care. In the third trimester of pregnancy, the nurse will take the time to teach you how to count fetal movements, how to distinguish true contractions from false contractions, practice the Lamaze breathing method to deal with uterine contraction pain, and even help you check whether there are small items such as puerperal pads and baby's half-back clothes missing from the maternity bag. In fact, they all fall under the category of prenatal care.

To put it bluntly, prenatal care is like "taking care of the house" for the upcoming baby. It must not only ensure that the "hardware" of the pregnant mother's body is functioning normally, but also ensure that the "soft environment" such as mood and state is comfortable. It is also necessary to understand the entire process of "taking the baby home" in advance, so that there can be less panic and more confidence.