Why is preventative care important?
Preventative care throughout pregnancy and postpartum is basic healthcare that all mothers deserve.
Isn’t there enough to deal with throughout pregnancy? Preparing for birth, proper nutrition for you and your growing baby (what to eat vs. what not to eat), decisions about where to give birth (hospital, birthing center, at home), whether or not to obtain additional help (doula, midwife), looking into classes for birthing and breastfeeding, deciding whether or not to breastfeed, preparing your home for the baby, putting together a list of items for a baby shower, learning about maternity leave, applying for maternity leave, preparing your work for your absence, finding child care for after the baby is born in order to return to work.
All of the above focuses on preparing for the birth of the baby and not on recovery of the woman’s body after giving birth.
Many women think that their body naturally recovers quickly (within 6 weeks, because that is usually the point where the doctor gives clearance for exercise) after giving birth. There is a belief that somehow women’s bodies are magically made to be able to withstand the lack of core strength, sleepless nights and stress of caring for a newborn because it is a process that nature has designed. I remember thinking… “How could nature prevent us from being able to nurture our babies?” It is possible…your body needs rest, proper nutrition, strengthening and stretching exercises, proper footwear, monitoring by a medical professional, and a care plan that is tailored to you for your recovery so that you can take care of your newborn and be able to do the physical activities and tasks you could do before you had a baby.
Mothers and caregivers deserve good care now more than ever for several reasons:
“It takes a village to raise a child” It is becoming less and less common for young families to live near friends and family who can help raise their child. People move around for work, travel, etc. Multigenerational homes are very rare in America. Most of the care of the baby will fall on the parents. Therefore it is important that parents stay in good physical health in order to care for their child.
The cost of having children has increased. Paying for resources to help with raising your child such as daycare, nanny, cleaner may not be available to families, leaving these tasks to the parents. Parents need to be in good physical shape to be able to work, take care of household chores and care for their child.
The maternal age is increasing. Older parents are more susceptible to musculoskeletal injuries, amongst other issues that can happen in the postpartum period. Over the past 3 decades U.S. birthrates have declined for women in their 20s and increased for women in their late 30s and 40s. The median age of women giving birth in the U.S. is now 30, the highest on record (U.S. Census Bureau, 2022). This means the majority of women giving birth are considered to have “geriatric pregnancies”, meaning these pregnancies are higher risk and present more physical challenges for women’s bodies. Therefore, the way our healthcare system cares for pregnant women needs to change.
Before I had my son, I worked as an oncology nurse for 12 years. In oncology medicine, preventative care is highly valued and widely taught. The best way to treat cancer in many cases is to find it early and/or prevent cancer from ever occurring in the first place. It shocked me to find that preventative care for pregnancy does not exist. Education on how to ergonomically hold your baby, awareness of the stress that your hands and wrists will go through, among many more issues, is not provided during the pregnancy or postpartum period.
Part of this is money driven. Cancer care drives high costs during treatment therefore much of it is spent on prevention in order to avoid the high costs to our healthcare system. Maternal care suffers from a lack of research and funding. In doing my research I found that most of the articles were outdated and focused on younger mothers in their teens and early twenties, who physiologically are different from mothers who give birth to their first child in their thirties and older. Mothers who have complications and/or injuries after giving birth may be overlooked because of lack of follow up by our medical system after being discharged from the hospital. How can mothers be advocates for their own bodies when they don’t even know what is not normal post birth and what can become long term chronic issues without therapy?
I was infuriated with the lack of resources and knowledge that was not shared with me during my postpartum period by my healthcare providers.
Preventative care should be normalized as an important part of your pregnancy and postpartum care, especially for women who are giving birth in their thirties and older.
Each woman needs a physical assessment upon conception which includes: line of work, type and frequency of exercise she does, how active she is, past health history and what goals she has for her body. The purpose of this assessment is to provide preventative measures to give her the best chance to be able to continue to do these things after having a baby. By doing this she can be proactive about caring for herself and feel some sense of control over the changes that happen to her body.