Prenatal Care Video Transcript

Prenatal care is an encompassing change in a person’s life in that it involves seeing your physicians on a lot of visits, it involves a lot of lab tests, it involves ultrasound which is one of the most fun tests you’ll ever have in your life. There is a lot of patient responsibility. It’s eating correctly It’s not smoking. We used to tell people they could have moderate amounts of alcohol during pregnancy. That is now absolutely taboo, zero tolerance for alcohol during pregnancy; it causes problems. Nobody can guarantee that your child will be perfect in life so what you do is your best every moment of time every day of your life and then the next day your do your best again which is how I practice medicine. There’s about a 4 million deliveries a year in America right now and one-third of those pregnancies have complications. They may be major, they may be minor but you want to have a doctor at a hospital you trust, that you can bond with and you really feel good about. We have that here in our hospital.

Good Health Before and during Pregnancy

If they have a high risk condition, medical illness, say they’re under special care or on medicine for a heart condition or diabetes. They need to see their doctor before they even get pregnant. People who are pregnant whether you have a health care condition or a normal pregnancy need to call their doctor as soon as they’re pregnant and let them know. They will get them in the office for a counseling visit and a check list making sure everything is going okay in early pregnancy; is there something different I should be doing?

Routine Doctor Visits

Then you’ll have your first official OB visit and that’s a rather long affair, a lot of tests, exams, a one-time only pelvic exam  . . . they only do a pelvic exam the beginning and end of pregnancy. A lot of blood tests . . . there are a lot of diseases out there and they keep inventing new diseases that they find out about that we didn’t know about 10 to 15 years ago that you need to be tested for. In general for a good healthy pregnancy, you see your doctor about once a month for four or five months. When you are about three months from your due date you see your doctor about every two weeks. The last four weeks of pregnancy you see them about every week until you hold a beautiful baby in your arms.

Individual Care

I wish everybody had 100 percent easy labor and perfect baby. But really life is not like that and life is not a number either. You don’t treat everybody the same. You want to give everybody close, individual care. For example a lot of my OB patients get advice from friends or relatives. Sometimes this advice is pretty good and sometimes it’s kind of strange, or they get it off the internet now. I tell my patients we’re trying to maximize and make the best baby possible. When my patients leave my office, sometimes some of their best questions happen at home around the dinner table and there’s no doctor around there. Or someone will tell you a story and they think ‘I’m not sure that sounds right’. I tell them to write it down, come on in here, sit with your doctor and talk to them and get your questions answered. I think people have better outcomes, they do better and sleep better at night if they get their questions answered.

Why Parents Return to Atrium

When people are pregnant they don’t want to go to a good delivery hospital; they want to go to the best. For your own child you don’t want good you want the very best and I feel that is what we have. People sense that when they’re here. We’ve had people who have delivered at other hospitals and they say, ‘why didn’t I come here with my first baby’. And their second, third and fourth baby they come back here over and over again. We have reunions with our patients. This is a very mobile society where eople are always looking over their shoulder saying is there something better down the road or somewhere else and we’re very blessed that people come back here over and over again.