SIX Ways to Increase the Safety of Motherhood

Here are some ideas of ways to make motherhood safer for you...

• Preconception Planning can reduce the number of birth defects, unplanned pregnancies, and give a woman and her family time to prepare their own health and lives for a new baby. For example, better nutritional habits lower a woman's risk of many pregnancy related complications, including anemia, problems associated with the amniotic fluid, and gestational diabetes, etc.
• Prenatal Care is important. Most of what will go wrong in your labor and birth can be detected in the first visit to a qualified practitioner (doctor or midwife). So aim to have prenatal begin as early as you suspect you are pregnant.
• The encouragement of Vaginal Birth After Cesarean (VBAC) for qualifying women, reduces the number of complications associated even with planned cesarean surgery. As our vaginal birth after cesarean rates rise, our cesarean rates fall.
• Reduction in Intervention rates in labor. Dr. Calderyo-Barcia, world renowned high-risk obstetrician, exclaims that we should limit the use of labor inducing medications to medical necessities and follow the Food and Drug Administrations guidelines removing inductions for convenience. Prenatal care providers also encourage upright positioning and freedom of mobility to reduce instrumental deliveries (forceps/vacuum), and also other options for pain relief (massage, hydrotherapy, acupressure, etc.).
• Use of Midwives as qualified care providers for low risk women. The majority of the babies in the world are birthed into the hands of midwives. Qualified midwives provide excellent care for the prenatal, intrapartum, and postpartum period.
• Breast feeding as the best way to feed your baby. The American Academy of Pediatrics has endorsed a policy of Breast feeding for one year. To help encourage this in all countries the World Health Organization along with UNICEF have endorsed the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative, which promotes policies to support Breast feeding, with helpful hints like, beginning Breast feeding as soon as possible after birth, preferably within one hour.