What To Do When Preparing To Become A Mother
Whether you’re planning to become a mother or are surprised to find out that in fewer than nine months, you’re going to be a mother, the nine months is a time of preparation and planning. There is a lot to prepare for and if this is your first baby, you’re already aware that absolutely everything is about to change. There are many factors to consider when planning for motherhood. Everything from health to finances to your job are all factors that will be impacted.
Your Health
Now is the time to take stellar care of your health. If you’re not yet pregnant, you should consider taking vitamins and and supplements. Of course you know that you need to quit smoking, drinking and use of recreational drugs as well as minimizing your junk food intake. You should also minimize your exposure to any chemicals whether it’s at work or around the house.
Beyond getting yourself in good physical shape for a pregnancy, if you’re planning pregnancy ahead, fathers should also take good care of their health. A healthy man has healthier sperm and healthy parents can have a better chance of conceiving a healthy baby.
Various hobbies you have may or may not be suitable for a pregnant person so take the time to learn about the best way to manage your health. You might be pleasantly surprised at some of the things you’ll still be allowed to do and also surprised at some of the things that are not recommended.
Your Doctor’s Appointments
At about 12 weeks, you’ll start having monthly visits with your doctor where your doctor will check for a heartbeat, measure your belly and weigh you. This is a great time to talk about any questions you may have.
Closer to the end of the pregnancy, doctor visits will happen more often and throughout the pregnancy you’ll have other tests as well including: blood tests, blood / glucose tests, ultrasound pictures done and you may have other tests or screening done depending on results from tests and depending on your preference and status of whether your pregnancy is high risk or not.
Are You Considering Your Work Commitments
When planning to become a mother, you’ll want to decide whether or not you’ll work straight up to the end of your pregnancy. This is something you’ll consider based on several factors including the safety of your job. Many women who work in jobs that are difficult to do while pregnant will talk to their employers about modified duties during the third trimester. If you are concerned your job may put your pregnancy at risk, talk to your doctor.
After the baby is born, will you return to work? Many countries have regulations that offer paid maternity leave. Most women take advantage of this time as much as possible. After maternity leave is up, you’ll need to arrange child care if you’re not going to stay home with your baby.
Child Care
Some women opt for public daycare and others opt for in-home daycare options. There are women who have family who they can utilize for child care as well. Child care is a personal decision so you should carefully consider your options while you’re pregnant. It can be expensive to have someone care for a young baby but you may not have a choice depending on your job, your finances and personal preference. It may take you time to come to a conclusion as this is an important decision that depends on many varying factors.
Your Home
When you are planning for motherhood, your home may need to change. Perhaps you’ll need a bigger home. You’ll definitely need lots of stuff! You’ll need to consider baby proofing as well.
Baby proofing might not need to happen straight away as your child won’t be mobile for quite some time but it’s important to consider things such as appliances, heat sources, sharp corners, toxic chemicals and sharp objects.
Your Family
If you have another child or other children, the dynamics of the family will change when you give birth to another baby. The same can be true of pets and other family members. Planning for a new baby will involve changes throughout the home and you might have to consider changing how the house is laid out and how many pets you have in the house.
Water Birth - History, Benefits and Risks of Water Birthing
February 17, 2010 by Mary
Filed under Water Births
Water birthing was first introduced in the 1960s, and a water birth is believed to be safe as well as providing many benefits for the mother and her baby. The method of giving birth in the water supposedly makes the infant’s entrance to the world smoother and less traumatic, not to mention provides incredible pain relief to the mother as she is in labor.
What Are The Benefits and Risks?
There has been considerable research into the safety of water birth. While some critics argue that water birth brings an unnecessary risk to the baby, like infection and water inhalation, others believe that there are no risks to water birth, only benefits for both mother and baby. Because childbirth is hard on the baby, it is believed that water that is properly heated will help to ease the transition from the mother’s birth canal to the outside world because of the water’s resemblance to the environment the baby has lived inside of the womb for the preceding nine months.
A few of the benefits of water birth are pain management and a decreased chance of episiotomy or a torn perineum. Water is thought to help the perineum stretch, which decreases the risk of tears during deliver, and the support from the water offers perineal support by causing the crowning of the baby’s head to slow down. In water birth research, the episiotomy rate is nonexistent, and perineal damage is overall less severe than birth outside of the water. And because water birth is considered hydrotherapy, which is shown to be an effective form of pain management for various conditions, it is commonly reported that water birth helps women manage the pain of the labor and delivery process.
The hydrotherapy involved in water births is also considered a safer alternative than epidural anesthesia during labor, which increases the risk of a forceps or vacuum assisted delivery and chances of a Cesarean section surgery. Being fully immersed in water helps the mother’s body to redistribute blood and stimulate oxytocin and vasopressin release.
The majority of the concerns of water birth are dismissed by the positive research done in countless studies, with the only critical opinions stemming from poorly managed or unmonitored water births that neglect to cite any evidence. While infection is the most commonly discussed concern, there are no instances of bacteria gathered in the birth pool itself, especially with the extreme protocols for cleaning birthing tubs between labors. In fact, even babies that tested positive for common bacteria found in tap water didn’t need treatment for an infection.
Documented cases do show that laboring in water can slow the labor process by decreasing the intensity of the mother’s contractions. Therefore, most hospitals and facilities where water birth is allowed make a woman wait until she is dilated to 5 centimeters before she can get into the water birth tub.
History of Water Birth
Water birth first began being researched by Igor Charkovsky, a Russian researcher, in the 1960s in the Soviet Union. He believed water birth was completely safe and provided many benefits to the mother and her baby. Later that decade, French obstetrician Frederick Leboyer used warm water to immerse a newly born infant as a practice of easing the transition from the mother’s womb to the outside world, thus eliminating the effects of any traumatic birth procedures.
Michel Odent, another French obstetrician, took the practice even further by using a warm water birth pool as a way to relieve the mother’s pain and normalize the birth process. He was the first to study the positive and negative effects on babies who were actually delivered in the water after women who labored in warm water birth pools refused to get out of the water to deliver the newborn. By the late 1990s, the idea of water birth had spread to Western civilization and thousands of women had given birth at Odent’s birthing center at Pithiviers, a commune in France.
Water birth became a practice in the United States when couples gave birth at home and it was soon introduced to hospitals and freestanding birth centers by obstetricians and midwives. The first hospital to create a protocol for giving birth in water was Monadnock Community Hospital in Peterborough, New Hampshire, in 1991, and more than 9,000 U.S. hospitals had adopted similar protocols by the year 2005.
