Prenatal care definition

Prenatal care refers to a full-cycle personalized care system for pregnant women and fetuses from the clinical confirmation of pregnancy to the onset of labor, covering physiological monitoring, risk prevention and control, nutritional exercise guidance, and psychological support. The core goal is to reduce the risk of adverse pregnancy outcomes such as pregnancy complications, premature birth, and birth defects, while ensuring the physical and mental health of pregnant women.

I have been working in an obstetrics clinic for nearly 8 years, and I have seen too many people misunderstanding this concept. When many people hear about prenatal care, their first reaction is "Oh, just go to the hospital for prenatal check-ups on time", or "Just supplement more nutrition at home and don't run around". In fact, these are too one-sided. I was particularly impressed by Sister Zhang, a 32-year-old pregnant mother of her second child whom I met last month. She suffered from gestational hypertension and preeclampsia when her first child was 7 months old. The baby who was delivered by emergency cesarean section lived in an incubator for half a month. This time, she came to register in a panic just 6 weeks after she was pregnant with her second child. The care plan we gave her was not just to prescribe laboratory tests: she would visit her once a week to measure her blood pressure and urine protein, and the nutritionist gave her a custom-made low-sodium diet that even included salt-reduced alternatives to her favorite braised food. We also specially arranged for colleagues from the psychology department to chat with her for half an hour every week, fearing that she would suffer from insomnia due to anxiety every day like her first child. In the end, she gave birth to a baby boy weighing 6 pounds and 8 taels at 39 weeks. After the birth, she said that this baby was much less worrying than the first baby.

In fact, until now, there is no completely unified view on the core boundaries of prenatal care in the industry. For example, veteran experts in evidence-based obstetrics pay more attention to quantifiable hard indicators. As long as the values ​​​​of progesterone, HCG, fetal heart rate monitoring, and large abnormality are within the reference range, it means that the care is in place. ； However, the concept of whole-person care that has gradually become popular in the past few years is different. Last year, our department went to Shanghai to attend an academic conference. Colleagues there shared a case of a pregnant mother who had normal prenatal check-up indicators, but suffered from insomnia every day, emotional breakdown, and even a tendency to self-harm. They directly adjusted the care plan to a one-hour walk with her family members every day, mindfulness meditation twice a week, and even allowed her to bring her family cat to the outpatient clinic to accompany her prenatal check-up. In the end, her emotional state improved a lot, and there were no problems throughout the third trimester of pregnancy. Who do you think is right among these two statements? In fact, they all make sense, but the focus is different.

Two months ago, a pregnant mother born after 2000 came to set up a profile. She asked me with the "prenatal care taboo list" I searched online, and asked me if it was true that she couldn't drink coffee, eat hot pot, and touch cosmetics. I crossed out half of it for her: no more than one American cup of coffee a day was absolutely fine. After the hot pot was thoroughly cooked, she could eat light pot bases. You see, good prenatal care is not to put shackles on pregnant mothers at all, but to help them live as comfortably as possible within a safe range.

My own feeling over the years is that prenatal care is never a unilateral matter of the hospital, nor is it something that only doctors and nurses do. The three fetal movements you count at a fixed time every day at home, the ten minutes your husband helps you rub your swollen feet like steamed buns before going to bed in the third trimester of pregnancy, and even the half-hour gossiping about your husband to your best friend when you are in a bad mood are all part of prenatal care. There was a pregnant mother who made snacks at home. She was busy in the store every day and had no time to do the special pregnancy exercises as required. We changed her plan and asked her to take two more steps every day when serving food and tiptoe when doing accounting. She was still able to achieve the effect of weight control, and the final delivery went smoothly.

In fact, to put it bluntly, there is no high-level definition of prenatal care. To put it bluntly, it is a group of people who accompany you and point out the pitfalls you may encounter in the ten months of pregnancy in advance. They can get around them if they can, and help you if they can't, so that you can suffer less, worry less, and give birth to your baby safely. It's that simple.