Pregnancy is the most delicate time for a mother and her baby. Pregnant mothers are at risk of pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, cervical problems, urinary and reproductive organ infections, and other pregnancy-induced conditions. These risks can also put your baby’s condition in jeopardy.
Monitoring your baby’s condition is important to avoid and reduce the risk of injury to both the mother and the baby. It helps determine and manage high-risk pregnancies and avoid preterm birth and lifetime disorders and impairments.
Don’t put your pregnancy at stake! Take care of the family you worked so hard to build. So read on and learn the importance of monitoring your baby’s condition.
Measure the Gestational Age of the Baby
Are you already excited about your baby? Did you even forget your last menstrual period (LMP) because of this excitement? Do not worry! Monitoring your baby through ultrasound or baby scan in the 6th to the 20th week of pregnancy is a good way to date the gestational age of your baby.
Checking out the heartbeat and measuring the embryo from the 6th to 11th week helps verify the age. Measuring the embryo, the gestational sac, and the heartbeat accurately determine the gestational age from after the 11th week to the 20th week.
Assess the Overall Health and Condition of the Baby
Monitoring your baby’s condition assesses his or her overall health. With it, your healthcare provider can identify fetal development at different stages, whether you have single or multiple pregnancies, and if there is a presence of irregularities.
It gives parents the peace of mind of a healthy pregnancy.
Detect Issues as They Arise
Because of health monitoring, it will be easy to detect any health issues during every pregnancy period, not only for the baby but also for the mother.
During 12 to 14 weeks, your healthcare provider may detect abnormalities like Down’s syndrome, Edward’s syndrome, or Patau’s syndrome through a Nuchal translucency scan. A general abnormality scan detects spina bifida, anencephaly, and heart defects at 20 to 22 weeks, as well as the normal development of the baby’s organs and placental health at any pregnancy stage.
The mother’s health affects the baby, so monitoring the baby’s condition also assesses the mother’s health. She may have a high-risk pregnancy, complications from previous pregnancies, or overdue pregnancy (longer than 40 weeks). Health conditions, such as gestational diabetes, cervical problems, infections, placenta previa (the placenta covers the cervix), excessive amniotic fluid, or placental abruption, also affect the baby’s health.
Take Immediate Action to Existing Conditions
Upon detecting conditions and abnormalities, your healthcare provider can immediately seek a second opinion from another member of the same hospital or clinic. They, then, will get confirmation of the baby’s detected abnormality through a series of tests.
Let us take, for example, the prenatal detection of Down’s syndrome. The healthcare provider will confirm the condition through non-invasive prenatal testing (NIPT, a blood test). To further confirm, the parents may opt to undergo a more invasive test like amniocentesis. This test takes a sample of amniotic fluid to identify chromosomal change and confirm the detected Down’s syndrome.
Your healthcare provider can immediately refer you to the appropriate provider for the specific condition detected or recommend prescriptions and actions as needed.
Prevent Birth Injuries
Appropriate actions taken for the detected conditions prevent birth injuries. Monitoring your baby’s condition may reduce the following injury risks.
- Stillbirth
- Fetal hemorrhage
- Neurological injury
- Cerebral palsy
- Umbilical cord prolapse
- Neonatal Seizures
Provide the Love and Care Your Baby Deserves
The baby is the greatest gift parents ever wanted and needed. Parents in their right frame of mind would give everything for them.
Giving importance to monitoring the baby’s condition, especially during pregnancy, reveals responsible parents. It ensures that the new family member and source of happiness are healthy.
So, provide the love and care your baby deserves, not just from the cradle to the grave. It all starts in the womb.
