Before you think about caring for your newborn, decorating a nursery, and bringing small clothes and other newborn baby products, you must ensure a healthy environment for your unborn baby.
A healthy prenatal environment ensures that the unborn baby is safe and is provided with every opportunity to receive a healthy beginning.
The biggest risk to a baby in a mother’s womb is of getting a congenital disability or birth injury. Certain medications, foods, and habits can cause irreversible harm to your baby in the form of behavioral abnormalities, motor function limitations, and cognitive impairments.
The risk of congenital disability is more significant during the first trimester when the baby’s major organs are developing. This is also when the mother needs to be careful about what she eats and the activities she engages in.
Maintaining a healthy lifestyle can help the mother keep her unborn baby safe from harm. Here are some suggestions to ensure the good health of the unborn baby.
1. Avoid alcohol consumption
Alcohol and birth injury have a major connection. Mothers who drink alcohol during pregnancy cause their babies irreversible damage from brain injuries and congenital disabilities. Children exposed to alcohol during pregnancy risk having fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD).
The most straightforward way to prevent this disorder in your unborn baby is to stop drinking alcohol before getting pregnant, so your system is free from toxins when you conceive.
However, if mothers who do not drink alcohol still find out that their newborn has a birth injury such as FASD must look for other reasons such as medical negligence.
Upon finding, you must seek legal help and file a complaint against the hospital administration and the doctors. You can get more information about birth injuries and legal help from the Birth Injury Justice Center, which provides extensive information on this topic.
2. Quit smoking
Like drinking, smoking will also not let you keep your unborn baby healthy. Therefore, don’t smoke during your pregnancy. More recommended is to quit smoking before conceiving the baby.
If you smoke regularly, decrease the frequency and gradually bring it to zero. Gradual reduction is important because a sudden change is not always sustainable.
When you start quitting before conceiving the baby, you can see if you can stick to it or not because you don’t want to hurt your baby.
Babies born to mothers who smoke have intrauterine growth restriction, cleft palate, SIDS (sudden infant death syndrome), tremors, stillbirth, preterm labor, etc. Nicotine can damage your baby’s developing brain and lungs.
The more heavily a mother drinks, the more the chances of intrauterine growth restriction. Vaping and e-cigars also have harmful effects on the unborn baby as many smokeless devices contain nicotine too.
3. Prevent the risk of infections
Many congenital disabilities in babies occur due to infections during pregnancy. Therefore, mothers should prevent themselves from infections.
Ways to do so include staying away from sick people, using hand sanitizers, frequent hand washing, and avoiding eating undercooked meat.
Furthermore, vaccines also prevent pregnant women from getting infections. After discussing with your pediatrician, get vaccine shots for Covid-19, seasonal flu, zika virus, Cytomegalovirus, etc.
In principle, the more careful you are about your health, the healthier your baby will be.
4. Discuss the effect of your medication with your doctor
Many prescription medications have adverse effects on your baby’s health. Often multiple drugs cause allergic reactions. Hence, discuss the possible side effects with your doctor if you take any medications.
Until the mid-twentieth century, doctors believed that the fetus resided in a protected environment separate from the mother. As a result, they thought the unborn baby could not receive the effects of prescription medicines and other harmful substances. But this belief came crashing when the effects of thalidomide wreaked havoc in the 1960s.
Thalidomide was a cure for morning sickness but resulted in limb and facial malformations and other issues. It was the watershed moment making the medical fraternity realize that they must be careful about the prescription medications they recommend to the pregnant mother.
Conclusion
Caring for your unborn child is your responsibility as much as caring for them when they come into this world. Certain behavior and decisions of the mother and the family put the baby at the risk of developing permanent issues.
For instance, missing prenatal appointments often result in treating a much more serious problem when it is revealed later. Similarly, taking vitamins or other prescription medications without your doctor’s approval is harmful to the baby. Therefore, ensure you don’t engage in damaging habits, eat a healthy diet, stay connected with your doctor, and engage in light-intensity physical activity.
Hope this article proves fruitful for you, and you got to learn simple yet important ways to keep your unborn child healthy.