Baby Making

Pregnancy is not just all about eating the foods you crave, avoiding strenuous activities, body discomforts, and nourishing the unborn child. This sensitive condition is all prone to disorders and diseases that are caused by different pregnancy factors. The kind of pregnancy disorder that would affect the mother depends on her body, over all health, lifestyle prior to conceiving and lifestyle during the whole course. Although most of these will disappear after giving birth, it can definitely affect the health of the mother and the baby inside her. Some of these can be prevented while others just come naturally.

One of the most common disorders during pregnancy is Gestational Diabetes Mellitus or GDM. This type of diabetes happens only to expecting women. GDM happens when the hormones in the placenta that helps in nourishing the baby would produce high level of glucose. Women at risk for GDM are those who are overweight before pregnancy, have a history of diabetes in the family, have an impaired tolerance in glucose, or had given birth previously to a baby that weighs more than nine pounds. Fortunately, Gestational Diabetes Mellitus can be diagnosed as early as the 24^th to the 28^th week of a woman's pregnancy. She may undergo a screening called oral glucose tolerance test. When a pregnant mother is diagnosed for GDM she must start monitoring the level of her blood glucose at least four times a day. Usually, the health care provider will give dietary guidelines that would distribute the limited amount of calories all through the day. The affected mother must also keep track of her weight gain during pregnancy. And if necessary, she must take insulin. Insulin is the only prescribed medication for diabetes during the whole course of pregnancy.

They said that when one is pregnant, she may experience swelling of the hands, feet, legs and ankles especially in the latter part of pregnancy. This is a result of water retention inside the body called edema. Although edema may not affect both mother and the baby, it may however lead to preclampsia. Along with edema, preclampsia is characterized by hypertension and albuminuria or the leaking of high amount of protein in the urine. This disorder commonly strikes in first pregnancies. Even if it goes after few months after delivery, preclampsia should be taken seriously. It may be a hint that the placenta is starting to detach from the uterus. Luckily, easy treatments can be done such as bed rest and prescribed medications. Some says that walking at least 30 minutes a day, eating beans and avoiding salty foods can do the trick. In case that preclampsia still occurs after being medicated, the mother will have to undergo caesarean delivery where the fetus is removed through surgery.

When preclampsia is left untreated, it would result to eclampsia. Eclampsia is a life-threatening condition during pregnancy that is characterized by high-blood pressure and even convulsions. It can be fatal to the mother and unborn baby, and treatments are not as easy as preclampsia.