Dr. Nayeem Sheriff

Hello, I am Dr. Vidya Bisla, a consultant gynecologist practicing in Sector-15 Gurgaon. Today, we are going to discuss about the routine Antenatal care that is important in the first three months of pregnancy. Soon after knowing that you have missed your period you can do a pregnancy home test kit and if it shows two lines, that means its positive. From that point onwards you should be under the care of a qualified doctor. On your first visit, you will be prescribed some medicines which are important for the proper formation of the baby and a few tests will be recommended to you after a general check-up of your health.

After the confirmation of this, we do certain blood tests for your general health and also certain infections that are which are important from the pregnancy point of view which can affect the health of the mother and the baby, both like thyroid tests, thalassemia screening and certain viral infections which we do as routine for everybody and which should be done right in the first trimester at around 7 or 8 weeks so that in case there is a problem we can start the corrective treatment for that.

During pregnancy there going to be a lot of changes in your body. From outside, we may just see that the person is gaining weight but the internal physiological changes that the body has to undergo to adjust the growth of the pregnancy are also tremendous. For example, the total amount of blood also increases in the pregnant lady. So in case you have a certain fitness level, you are able to handle these changes very well. For people, who have been active before pregnancy, they can handle it more easily than persons who are not active. Still, whatever your physical activity was before, you can start a daily walk for at least 30 minutes at a normal pace where you are not breathless while talking and walking right from the day when you come to know that you are pregnant. So, after exercising, you need to watch your diet.

In diet the most important thing is that we have to take a nutritionally balanced diet. In the first three months of pregnancy the energy requirement does not increase but it has to be a balanced diet which gives you adequate amount of proteins, vitamins, minerals and carbohydrates to give you that energy to handle those changes occurring in your body. So, you can eat almost everything but there are certain foods which are known to contain chemicals which are harmful to pregnancy. Those should be avoided for example, Chinese food contains Ajinomoto. So you should avoid Chinese food. You can may be make it at home if you are fond of it without adding Ajinomoto to it. Then coffee which contains caffeine should be avoided in pregnancy.

Generally, cold drinks of all the colors are not good for a pregnant lady. So avoid those things in your diet. Junk food, because it won’t give you any minerals or vitamins, also should be avoided. Then, a handful of nuts in your daily intake of food is going to give you a lot of energy and minerals and proteins. So those are recommended for almost everybody. They will not harm the pregnancy in any way. There are a lot of myths associated with it but they are all false. Any self-medication should be strictly avoided in pregnancy because there are only few medicines which are safe in pregnancy which we recommend. So, whenever you see any doctor for any ailment you must always tell the doctor that I’m pregnant so he or she can take care of the medicines in that sense.

In case, you need any answer to any questions or queries, you can book an appointment through Lybrate.