Prenatal Care – Low and High Risk

It is always advisable to take steps of making sure you and your baby are healthy during pregnancy. Prenatal care refers to the health care you get while you are pregnant. It includes your check-ups and prenatal testing, which will help spot health problems early.

Prenatal care can help keep you and your baby healthy. Babies of mothers who do not get prenatal care are three times more likely to have a low birth weight and five times more likely to die than those born to mothers who do get care.

Gynaecologists and obstetricians can spot health problems early when they see mothers regularly. This allows doctors to treat them early. Early treatment can cure many problems and prevent others. Dr Kwebena Essel can also talk to pregnant women about things they can do to give their unborn babies a healthy start to life.

Dr Essel provides a comprehensive range of both outpatient and inpatient consultation services, including:

• Care for maternal medical complications
• fetal abnormalities or anomalies
• Ultrasound services
• Diagnostic procedures
• Genetic and preconception counselling
• Prenatal screening testing

By identifying problems as early as possible, you give your baby the best chance for treatment before birth and proper care after giving birth. You also give yourself time to make decisions about care, to prepare for procedures, to deal with the emotional impact of a diagnosis or to find ways to accommodate any health challenges, with the help of Dr Kwebena Essel.

Pregnancies considered high risk include the following:

• Advanced maternal age, where the mother is 35 and may have reached her perimenopause age
• Maternal health problems such as increased pregnancy risk, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, heart or blood disorders and infections.
• Multiple pregnancies, where the woman may be carrying twins or order multiples.
• Pregnancy history, where the mother had previously given birth prematurely, pregnancy-related hypertension disorders and multiple premature childbirths.
• Women who have a history of second and third-trimester pregnancy loss, miscarriage or stillbirth.

Sometimes we need to treat babies before they’re born. Treatments include:

• Drug therapy
• Blood transfusion
• Gene therapy
• Fetal surgery
• Placing a shunt through the skin to help blood or other fluids flow

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