Before a woman becomes pregnant, it is important for her to have good nutrition and a healthy lifestyle. Good prenatal care and medical treatment during pregnancy can help prevent complications. However, some factors that can be present before a woman becomes pregnant also increase the likelihood of a high-risk pregnancy.
These risk factors include:
- Age: mothers younger than 19 and older than 40 are more likely to have high-risk pregnancies than women in their 20s and 30s
- Weight: underweight and overweight mothers also tend to have more than their share of problems with pregnancies
- High-risk history: Women who’ve had high-risk pregnancies in the past are more likely than others to have them again
- Pre-existing health conditions: High blood pressure, diabetes, and HIV can all be dangerous for pregnancy. In particular, women with HIV –which attacks the immune system– can infect their babies during pregnancy, while giving birth, or through breastfeeding. However, there are effective ways to prevent transmission of the disease.
The pregnancies of healthy women can also become high-risk. For example, pre-eclampsia is a disease that develops only during pregnancy, and its symptoms include high blood pressure, as well as changes in the levels of (1) proteins in urine and (2) liver enzymes in the blood. Pre-eclampsia is easily treated, and with treatment mothers can have healthy babies. Untreated pre-eclampsia, however, can hurt the kidneys, liver and brain, and cause long-term damage to both the mother and the baby, especially if it evolves into Eclampsia, whose symptoms include seizures and coma. Untreated preclampsia can even be fatal.
Healthy expecting mothers may also develop gestational diabetes, which is discussed in a separate article. With appropriate treatment, gestational diabetes will not prevent mothers from having healthy pregnancies and healthy babies.
Some pregnancies are thrown off course by preterm labor. The mother begins to have severe contractions before her pregnancy has reached its 37th week. Although her body is already preparing to give birth, the baby is not yet fully grown, and may have trouble surviving outside the womb. In cases of preterm labor, health care providers may go to extraordinary lengths to stop the labor, prescribing medication or extended bed rest.
It is impossible to predict which mothers will have preterm labor, but some factors such as a history of infections, a small or shortened cervix, or a history of pre-term births, do appear to increase the mother’s risk.
Iron deficiency anemia is another potentially severe health problem that can emerge during pregnancy, in addition to pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, and pre-term labor. Iron is an essential building block for red blood cells, the vehicles that carry oxygen to every part of the mother’s body, including her growing baby. If the mother is short on iron, her body cannot deliver enough oxygen where it is needed. According to a report in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, iron-deficiency anemia in the first or second trimester of pregnancy can double or even triple the mother’s risk of having a premature delivery or a low birth weight baby. It also increases the chances that her baby will be born anemic.
A slight iron deficiency may cause no symptoms in the mother, but as the supplies of iron fall, she is likely to feel tired, weak, and irritable, and have a hard time concentrating on her work. Other symptoms include low body temperature, Pale skin, shortness of breath, chest pain, dizziness, cold or numb hands and feet, and a apid or irregular heartbeat. If some of these symptoms are present, a health care provider needs to give the mother a simple blood test to determine if there is iron deficiency anemia. The test can be repeated at every pre-natal visit.
According to research from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, pregnant women need at least 27 milligrams of elemental iron every day, which they can obtain in part through iron-rich foods such as red meat, leafy greens, eggs, poultry, dried fruits, and iron-fortified cereal. However, diet alone is not likely to supply enough iron.
Therefore, many doctors and leading health institutions — including the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services– urge pregnant women to take daily doses of over-the-counter iron pills or prenatal vitamins that contain iron. The side effects of pure iron supplements — upset stomachs, nausea, and constipation — can themselves become a problem, but doctors are often able to share with expectant mothers some other strategies for getting enough iron.
Mothers can take many other measures to prevent health problems during pregnancy; these include proper immunizations, regular exercise, the maintenance of a health weight and diet, and the avoidance of tobacco, alcohol and other mind-altering substances including caffeine. The most important take home message, however, is that good and frequent prenatal care is essential — indeed, the most important step, that expecting mothers can take to ensure healthy pregnancies.
*This article is based on the information at http://www.advancedfertility.com, http://www.ahealthyme.com,http://www.nlm.nih.gov and http://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/high_risk_pregnancy.cfm