Public health officials are now encouraging women to make sure they are in optimal health well in advance of a pregnancy to reduce the risk of preventable birth defects and complications. They have recast the message to emphasize not only prenatal care, as they did in the past, but also what they are calling “preconception care.”
The problem, doctors say, is that by the first prenatal visit, a woman is usually 10 to 12 weeks pregnant. “If a birth defect is going to happen, it’s already happened,” said Dr. Peter S. Bernstein, a maternal fetal medicine specialist at Montefiore Medical Center in New York who helped write new government guidelines on preconception care.
That’s difficult isn’t it? To have a preconception visit? How would a married couple know when that intimate session have led to that successful sperm fertilising the ovum? And we are talking about married couples here.. what about the millions in the U.S. having loose sex?
Simple.
Doctors say that planning pregnancies and using reliable contraception are part and parcel of preconception care, and they are encouraging all health providers — not just obstetricians but emergency room doctors, primary care physicians, cardiologists and endocrinologists — to counsel women of childbearing age about the possibility of pregnancy. “What we’re actually talking about,” Dr. Atrash said, “is women’s health.”
Ob-gyn anyone, again?
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