The desire to have healthy children can encourage some women to make healthier lifestyle choices when they want to get pregnant. Women may become more conscious of the food, beverages and drugs they are putting into their bodies and set aside time to exercise.
To optimize women's fertility, taking better care of their bodies is a good first step. What else can women do to improve their odds of having a baby?
The most important advice for a woman who wants to get pregnant is to get to know her body, specifically her menstrual cycle, said Dr. Mary Ellen Pavone, a reproductive endocrinologist and infertility specialist and medical director of the IVF program at Northwestern Medicine's Fertility and Reproductive Medicine in Chicago.
"It's important to know how far apart her cycles are so she can more accurately time intercourse to try to get pregnant," Pavone said.
Here are 12 tips that may help increase a healthy woman's chances of becoming pregnant, assuming that neither she nor her partner have a known fertility problem.
In spite of technology and medical science's ability to manage complex health problems, the current maternity care environment has increased risks for healthy women and their babies. It comes as a surprise to most women that standard maternity care does not reflect best scientific evidence. In this column, evidence-based maternity care practices are discussed with an emphasis on the practices that increase safety for mother and baby, and what pregnant women need to know in order to have safe, healthy births is described.
Keywords: evidence-based maternity care, childbirth education, safe birth, healthy birth, healthy birth practices, induction, cesarean, movement in labor, labor support, routine interventions, epidural, episiotomy, intravenous in labor, nutrition during labor, maternal-infant interaction, breastfeeding, birth positions, normal birth, electronic fetal monitoring, informed decision making, choice in childbirth
Childbirth education can simplify pregnancy and birth and help women navigate the maze of modern obstetrics in order to have a safe, healthy birth. Pregnancy is complex and fraught with potential for worry and confusion. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that things can go terribly wrong. Excellent childbirth education can help women learn how simple birth can and should be, how to stay confident in their ability to grow and birth their babies, and how to avoid “spoiling the pregnancy” with worry and fear.
Preparation for birth and mothering starts at the beginning of pregnancy (Lothian, 2008). It takes 9 months to grow a baby and to prepare emotionally and physically for birth and being a mother. Over the course of the pregnancy, women slowly attach to their babies, getting to know them through kicks and periods of rest and through changes to their own bodies as the pregnancy progresses. The physical growth of the baby happens simply and easily from one day to the next throughout pregnancy, but the emotional and psychological changes of pregnancy can easily be disrupted. Standard prenatal care and medicalized labor and birth interfere in powerful ways with nature's plan, creating fear and uncertainty when nature intends confidence and competence to develop.
Childbirth education, right from the beginning of pregnancy, can help women choose health-care providers and places of birth that provide evidence-based maternity care, make thoughtful but sometimes difficult decisions about prenatal testing, and deal with fears for themselves and their babies. And, over the course of the pregnancy, childbirth education can help women develop plans for labor so that labor and birth can unfold optimally in the safest, healthiest way possible.
Childbirth education can help women connect with excellent resources and research to help them make decisions about their pregnancies and births that ultimately will make birth healthier and safer for them and their babies. Some of those resources include Lamaze's weekly pregnancy e-mails (Lamaze…Building Confidence Week by Week) and the six Lamaze Healthy Birth Practice papers. Other resources include information provided by the organizations Childbirth Connection, the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, and Choices in Childbirth.
Childbirth education provides a forum for discussing options, helping women to choose wisely and communicate effectively with care providers and hospitals. Knowing where and when there are choices, and where and when there are no realistic choices, is vital information for women wanting to have safe, healthy births. Childbirth educators can help untangle the issues and help women get a full understanding of their rights, not just to informed consent but also to informed refusal.
If evidence-based maternity care is to become a reality, every pregnant woman needs to know how to have a safe, healthy birth and make decisions that reflect this knowledge. Childbirth educators, nurses, midwives, obstetricians, and hospital administrators need to “rock the boat,” to speak boldly and bluntly, to honestly tell pregnant women what they need to know in order to have safe, healthy births
