Take care of these 25 things before conceiving

Just a news of expecting a baby brings cheer and excitement in a couple’s life. However, being prepared for it helps you become healthy and bring in a healthy baby too. 

Here are few things that one must take care of before and while conceiving.

1. Use Ovulation calculator to decide the best time for pregnancy.
2. Stop taking contraceptives.
3. Preconception health care is necessary to avoid miscarriage, stillbirth or premature birth
4. Keep yourself mentally ready and healthy for delivery.
5. Be aware of your body i.e. how healthy and fit you are.
6. Have medical checkups before getting pregnant.
7. If your weight is on the higher side, lose weight before getting pregnant as being overweight brings complications.
8. Fathers should also avoid smoking and drinking for better sperm quality.
9. Intake of regular folic acid.
10. Regular Exercise.
11. Stay away from Infections.
12. Consult dentist as hormonal shifts can cause gum diseases which are harmful for baby.
13. Eat lot of fish for child’s development but avoid fish that has mercury.
14. Completely avoid smoking, drinking and caffeine yourself.
15. Avoid passive smoking too.
16. Avoid soda and fruit juice as they may raise sugar levels.
17. Sleep as much as you can.
18. Take adequate amount of iodine in your diet.
19. Take up-to-date vaccinations.
20. Ensure balanced diet in consultation with dietician.
21. Keep yourself away from stress.
22. Take lot of carbohydrates, milk and milk products, fats and proteins and fresh fruits and vegetables and avoid taking uncooked or undercooked food.
23. Have a healthy working environment and avoid getting exposed to chemicals like lead and mercury and radioactive substances like X-Rays.
24. Do not take any medicine for headache, pain etc. without consulting your doctor.
25. Keep a check on your blood pressure.




A Checklist of Must Do’s Before You Try to Conceive 

Vaginismus is a condition where vaginal contractions and squeezes may be caused due to pain during intercourse or due to the insertion of objects like tampons. This mildly uncomfortable condition is also characterised by spams and other symptoms like the feeling of coming up against a thick wall which can cause pain. This may be due to a variety of reasons starting from infections to anxiety. To a large extent, the treatment of this condition depends on the cause. Following are the various ways in which this condition can be treated.

    Sex Therapy: A sexologist or an expert who specialises in psychosexual medicine can help in treating this condition by conducting a series of counselling sessions where psychoanalysis will help in understanding and unravelling the cause of the condition. This may be followed by CBT or cognitive behavioural therapy. This kind of therapy usually helps in reprogramming the brain after the root cause for the condition is known. 
    Exercises: During sex therapy, the doctor may also teach you various kinds of exercises and vaginal trainers that can help you in strengthening the pelvic floor and relaxing the muscles as well. These vaginal trainers are especially helpful in equipping you suitably so that you can relax your vagina and let the insertion happen. Vaginal trainers consist of four smooth balls of plastic which can be inserted with the help of lubricants to help in stretching the vagina. 
    Relaxation: Getting yourself to relax is also a matter of exploration and touching, which can help you understand the kind of touch and the exact areas that make you tense. During sex therapy, you may be taught a technique known as progressive relaxation. This mode includes tensing and relaxing your muscles as you explore by inserting a finger. 
    Sensate Focus: This is a part of sex therapy and involves your partner. In this method, you will be asked to abstain from sex and touch each other without going to the genitals and other private parts. This will help in better arousal and sexual stimulation.
    Surgery: The last option for treating a very severe form of this condition is to put the patient through surgery which will seek to remove endometriosis, as these growths in the womb's lining can cause a lot of pain during intercourse. Also, vaginal enlargement surgery can be carried out with the help of episiotomy. 

This kind of procedure usually helps in fixing the scar tissue that may have been left from a previous procedure, which can restrict or block the vaginal path. Getting help at the right time for this condition is of great importance so as to have a normal sex life.

How to Treat Vaginismus

One of the most common physically transmitted diseases is chlamydia. Chlamydia is a type of infection caused by the bacteria "Chlamydia trachomatis". The symptoms of Chlamydia are similar to the symptoms of Gonorrhoea (a bacterial sexually transmitted infection). Chlamydia infection causes permanent fallopian tube damage in women, leads to future ectopic pregnancy (the fertilised egg attaches itself outside the uterus) and infertility.

Symptoms of Chlamydia 
Men and women afflicted with chlamydia exhibit different symptoms.
The symptoms of chlamydia in women include:
1. Abnormal, sometimes foul-smelling, vaginal discharge
2. Bleeding between menstrual cycles
3. Painful periods
4. Abdominal pain, accompanied with fever
5. Pain during intercourse
6. Burning or itching around or in the vagina
7. Painful urination

Men usually display the following symptoms if they have chlamydia:
1. Minimal amounts of cloudy or clear discharge from the head of the penis
2. Painful urination
3. Itching and burning around the slit of the penis
4. Swollen and painful testicles

Treatment options available
1. Chlamydia is diagnosed by taking a swab from the cervix (in women) or the urethra (in men). These swabs will be sent to the laboratory for analysis. Urine samples can also be taken to check for the appearance of bacteria.

2. Since chlamydia is a bacterial infection, it can be easily treated with antibiotics. Oral antibiotics such as azithromycin or doxycycline are commonly prescribed by doctors. Azithromycin is usually prescribed in a large, single dose. The dose may also be stretched out for five days. Doxycycline is taken two times daily for a week.

3. With the right antibiotic therapy, the infection will clear up in 1 to 2 weeks approximately. It is very important that you finish the medication course if you wish you heal completely without having to suffer from further bouts of this disorder.

4. Women with critical chlamydia may need hospitalisation, pain medicine and IV (intravenous, or directly through the vein) antibiotics. Pregnant women with chlamydia infection can be safely cured with antibiotic such as erythromycin ethylsuccinate, amoxicillin and azithromycin.

Your partner needs testing and treatment as well to avoid further spread and reinfection. It is vital not to engage in any sexual activity while the treatment is ongoing. A further retest should be done three months later to make sure the infection is rectified.

Symptoms of Chlamydia and Ways to Treat the Disease

Factors that determine the success of your IVF procedure

IVF or In Vitro Fertilization is a process wherein an egg is fertilized by a sperm in a laboratory dish to form the embryo (baby's first cell) which after growth in artificial medium in the lab is transferred into the uterus of women, In general, a blood sample is collected to determine whether you're pregnant or not about 10-14 days after the eggs are retrieved.

Coming to the success of the procedure, a number of factors are at play and these are:

The age at which you get pregnant

A factor that plays a role in influencing your chances of experiencing success in your IVF procedure is the age at which you opt for this procedure. The lower your age, the chances that you may get pregnant and deliver a healthy child using your own eggs witness an increase. On the other hand, if you're aged 41 and above, or your egg reserve is very low donor eggs are the most preferred option as they help to increase your prospects of meeting a success.

Lifestyle habits

Certain lifestyle factors can significantly affect your prospects of getting pregnant through this route. Smoking can reduce your prospect of success using this procedure by about 50%. It can cause you to have lesser number of eggs retrieved during the procedure while increasing instances of miscarriages. Likewise, obesity, alcohol use, consumption of excessive caffeine and drugs can adversely affect your chances of getting pregnant using IVF.

Cause of Infertility

If your supply of eggs is normal, success rate using IVF is high. Women who suffer from the problem of endometriosis experience lesser chances of getting pregnant than women who have unexplained fertility.

Reproductive history

IVF success rate chances are higher if you've delivered a baby previously using IVF.

Embryo status

Embryos that are better developed with good grade stand a higher chance of experiencing success than less developed embryos. More importantly, not every embryo is able to survive the development process.



What are the factors that determine the success of your IVF procedure?

Although most women experience menopause between the age of 45 and 55, but when women experience the menopause before they reach 40, it is termed a premature or early menopause. It is also known as premature ovarian failure.
This may be due to primary ovarian insufficiency in which there is decreased activity in ovaries and the periods spontaneously stops. It may be result of chemotherapy treatment for cancer or it can be surgically induced menopause when the ovaries are removed. Premature menopause can also be caused by treatments for cancer or other conditions that involve chemotherapy or radiation therapy for the pelvis. These treatments can damage the ovaries and result in ovarian failure. The chances of premature menopause depend on the type and amount of chemotherapy as well as the age of the patient

Removal of both ovaries by surgery causes menopause right away. Menstruation stops after this surgery, but the hormones of women facing such condition drop quickly. They experience strong menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes and diminished sexual desire.

Chromosome defects like Turner s syndrome can lead to premature menopause. In this condition, the female is partly or completely missing an X chromosome due to which the ovaries does not form normally leading to early menopause. Women with a family history of premature menopause are more likely to have the same themselves. Autoimmune diseases like Thyroid disease and rheumatoid arthritis that attack the body's immune system may mistakenly effect the ovaries thus preventing them from making hormones.

One should visit agynaecologist, if the period stops or changes before the age of 40. Menopause is confirmed when a woman does not have her period for 12 months in a row. Blood tests for measurement of oestrogen and related hormones, like follicle-stimulating hormone determines if one has reached premature menopause

Women have premature menopause can be observed as physical problems, emotional disturbances or problems associated with sexual functioning. Women experience sudden waves of mild or intense body heat commonly known as hot flashes and can also experience profuse sweating called as night sweats and have difficulty in sleeping. They experience vaginal dryness and the sexual drive or the libido also decreases. The bone density decreases leading to osteoporosis and fractures. In addition to physical symptoms, there are emotional symptoms like anxiety, mood swings, loss of focus and difficulty in concentration. Women who want to conceive and go through premature menopause may feel extremely upset. The sexual symptoms include dryness and thinning of walls of vagina, thus causing pain or discomfort during sexual intercourse.

Premature Menopause - Signs and Causes

Pregnancy is one of the most important period in a woman s life. This is a time when she should indulge in the best of everything when it comes to diet, rest and exercise, depending on the recommendations of the doctor. As the pregnancy progresses, there are many myths and facts that take over. These usually reach a crescendo by the time the pregnancy reaches the third trimester. Let us find out ways and tips, which you can use to care for your baby and yourself during the third trimester of your pregnancy.

Travel: This an often debated aspect that one has to consider, especially during the third trimester of one s pregnancy. While many people say that it is not appropriate to travel during the third trimester, this really depends on the state of your health during this time. If you are suffering from problems like blood clot formation, then you may want to avoid travel as this can lead to blood clots due to long hours spent sitting in a flight or a train. Travel during the third trimester must also be avoided so as to avoid undue exposure to infections when you use public restrooms. This should be avoided, especially if you have fallen prey to infections in the beginning of the pregnancy. Also, long travel by cars should be avoided. If you have to travel, then you must stop often to stretch your legs on a regular basis.
Movement of the Baby: One of the most important signs that shows you that your baby is thriving and is doing well is the movement of the fetus. This must be monitored and not ignored at all. It is important to keep in touch with your doctor regarding the number of movements that you should ideally feel during 24 hours. If you are not feeling anything close to that number, then you must have the same checked up by the doctor so that any complications may be unraveled on a timely basis.
Sleeping: How you sleep also affects the health of the baby. You need to avoid sleeping on your back during the third trimester, as this can lead to oxygen supply problems. The uterus tends to become heavy during this part of the pregnancy and it can come to rest on the feotus in case you sleep on your back. This lead to a reduction or lack of the blood and oxygen supply to the baby. You should ideally sleep on your side, with a pillow to keep your legs at a proper level and support your aching back as well. You should also try and sleep on your left side as this promotes better blood flow to the baby inside.

In Your Third Trimester? How Should You Take Care of Your Baby?

Want to consult online with a top Cosmetic Gynecology? Do so easily online at Lybrate now!

Consult with a Cosmetic Gynecology - Online and Easy!

FilterClear All

COMMON SPECIALITIES

COMMON ISSUES