MEDICAL CARE: PRENATAL VISITS
The importance and significance of
regular prenatal visits to the doctor or clinic cannot be overstressed. It is
essential that attendance be made as early as is practical. If there is any
question of pregnancy, then a visit is obligatory.
The initial visit sets the pattern for
the future. But besides this, it gives the doctor a series of base-line figures
with which he can compare your medical status at subsequent visits. This can be
of inestimable value, particularly if complications set in at any stage - and
this is a probable likelihood with a certain number of people. There is no
knowing at the start if you are destined to be one of those special "at risk"
persons.
There are three major aims for following
through with adequate antenatal care. These are:
(1) To make sure that
the mother reaches the end of pregnancy as healthy (or maybe even healthier) as
she was beforehand.
(2) To detect any
physical or psychological defect as early as possible and correct this promptly.
(3) That the mother
is delivered of a healthy, normal infant.
It is only in the past fifty years that
as much attention has been paid to the forty weeks of pregnancy as is paid to
the fourteen hours or so of actual labour.
The value and beneficial result of this
is reflected in the major decline in mortality figures, both for mothers and
new-born babies. In fact, it only requires a quick glance at the striking
reduction to be aware of the true benefits of today's insistence on adequate
prenatal care.
If you have ever had the time or
opportunity to wander through the yard of an old church, this will be impressed
on your mind even more indelibly. Most old churchyards had the cemetery as part
of the general premises. A check on the tombstones indicates the large number of
very young children (and often young mothers) who died, no doubt in childbirth
or soon after. Historical novels, and even tales from older members of families,
will recount the disasters of yesteryear which regularly overtook the small
children and babies in almost every family.
They were, in truth, the bad old days.
Proper antenatal care was either non-existent or very skimpy. Midwives did their
best. Doctors were often ill-equipped, and tiny cottage hospitals were quite
hopeless in their attempts to cope with anything but relatively normal
deliveries. Antibiotics, safe and adequate anaesthesia, safe methods for blood
transfusion, blood typing and cross matching, and methods for foetal monitoring
were still a long way off in those days.
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GENERAL HEALTH
