Each year in the United States, there are about 3.6 million births and you feel it’s time to join these numbers.
Whether you’re new to family building or you’re looking to add to your growing family, it’s always a great practice to make sure that you lay the best foundation possible for your pregnancy.
To that end, our experienced team of pregnancy and obstetric experts at Alliance OB-GYN pulled together a few great strategies that can go a long way toward setting the stage for a successful pregnancy. Let’s take a look.
One of the most important steps you can take is to set up a preconception counseling appointment with our in-house specialist Chantel Smith, MSN, APN, who is a women’s health nurse practitioner.
During this visit, Chantel performs a comprehensive review of your current health, your medical history, and your family’s medical history. The goal is to identify any potential issues that might affect you or your baby’s health so that we can address them beforehand.
We suggest making this appointment about three months before you start actively trying to conceive, which allows us some good time to prepare your body and put some of the following tips into practice.
Your weight can very much affect a pregnancy so we always want you starting out within healthy weight ranges. And this applies to both ends of the weight scale. Being underweight is just as potentially dangerous as being overweight.
Granted, the scales tend to tip toward the higher end, given that slightly more than 40% of adults in the US have obesity. In these cases, we’ll work toward losing 5% to 10% of your total body weight, which can very much support a healthy pregnancy.
Another great practice is to start taking about 400 milligrams of folic acid before you get pregnant. Folic acid helps your body to store nutrients and it can also help prevent brain and spinal cord defects in the fetus.
As we mentioned, Chantel spends a good deal of time reviewing your medical history to identify any potential issues. Your own medical history, as well as your family’s history, can tell us a lot about your family tree (which your unborn child inherits) and whether there are any risks.
If your family has a history of certain genetic disorders or mutations, Chantel might recommend that you undergo genetic counseling before pregnancy to determine whether you’re carrying these genetic anomalies. For example, if there’s any history of conditions like cystic fibrosis or sickle cell anemia, we can check to see whether you are a potential carrier.
Chronic disease can very much impact your pregnancy so we want to make sure that they are well managed heading in. For example, if you have a condition like diabetes or high blood pressure (hypertension), it’s paramount that we do everything we can to keep them under control and this is best done before your pregnancy, not during it.
We’re going to leave you with a more obvious pregnancy prep tip: ditch the vices. If you use tobacco products, for example, quitting now can reduce certain pregnancy complications by about 20%.
And the same holds true for alcohol and drugs. If you drink an occasional glass of wine or beer, that’s not really a problem. Heavy drinking and drug use, however, are, so it’s a good idea to really curb these behaviors before you get pregnant. Besides, you'll need to stop them completely during your pregnancy, so why not get started a little earlier?
To formulate a more personalized preconception plan, you can start by contacting us online or by phone at one of our offices in Delran, Lumberton, or Hainesport, New Jersey, to schedule an appointment with Chantel today.
