What does it mean by maternal health?

Being a mother is probably most loving experience for a woman. A mother is a defender, enforcer and a good friend of children. A mother is an unselfish, loving one who has to sacrifice many of their desires and demands for the wishes and demands of their children. For this fact, women usually ignore their health too. Usually, a mother works hard for their child and family but cares little about physical and psychological health. Mother health contains both the combinations of physical and mental health that are usually influenced by the circumstances before and after pregnancy. But maternal health is the health fact of women during pregnancy, childbirth and the postpartum period. It encompasses the healthcare dimensions of family planning preconception, prenatal, and postnatal care in order to ensure a positive and fulfilling experience in most cases and reduce maternal morbidity and mortality in other cases.

Preconception care:

Tend to health before conceiving is good for both would be mom and baby. This is called preconception care. The purpose is to detect any prenatal danger to mother and baby during the gestational period. This is about making yourself healthy—physically and mentally—before you proceed the next step into gestation. You can start by making a preconception counseling consultation with your gynecologist.

What occurs at a Preconception Doctor's Consultation?

A preconception consultation is a right time to ask your doctor all the matters that are on your mind -- whether it's about your dietary, prenatal minerals and vitamins or any kind of health affairs that run in your family.

During a preconception appointment, you and your gynecologist will discuss these:

•    Reproductive history: This is including previous pregnancies, your menstrual routine, contraception, previous Pap test results, and any sex diseases or infections in the vagina you had before.

•    Medical history: This contains any health complications you have now so that you can keep them under control before getting pregnant. It is also important to make your doctor know about any surgeries, hospitalizations, and transfusion especially any gynecologic surgeries you have had at past. A history of previous surgeries may affect how you will maintain during the gestational period.

•    Medication: Inform your doctor any prescribed medication you are having or have taken.

•    History of family health: Inform your doctor about your family health history that any type of medical conditions, such as hypertension, diabetes mellitus or blood clots.

•    Your body weight: It's very important to keep your body weight ideal before getting gestation. That means gaining weight if you are underweight to decrease the danger of giving birth of a low –weight infant or losing -weight if you are bulky to reduce the risk of difficulty during pregnancy.

•    Lifestyle: Your healthcare provider will ask you questions about your partner's and your tendency that could affect your pregnancy, such as drinking alcohol, smoking and using fractional drugs. The aim is to assist you to stop any manners that may stand in the path of a healthy gestation

•    Dietary:  Doctor will provide you a chart of drink and food which contains various foods rich in vitamins, fiber calcium and folic acid and other nutrients.

•    Prenatal vitamins: Before your pregnancy starts, you should be take a folic acid supplementary. Folic acid causes less possibility that your infant will have a tactile tube defect. Your gynecologist will advise for taking 400 micrograms of folic acid regularly before and after conception.

Your gynecologist may also:

•    Perform a physical test to revolute your heart, ovary, pelvis, abdomen and may take a peps smear test.

•     Another lab test: Doctor may suggest you take some pathology test to determine hepatitis, HIV, syphilis, rubella, and others.

•     Discuss to know about making a chart of your menstrual period to detect ovulation and chance of getting pregnant.

•     Check on your vaccination. If you are not shielded against chickenpox, rubella, HSB then your doctor may advise to get an appropriate vaccination and delaying attempts to conceive for at least 4 weeks.

Prenatal health:

Prenatal care is a substantial part of primitive maternal health care. It is advised to expectant moms receive at least 04 antenatal visits, in which a doctor can check for symptoms of ill health – such as anemia, underweight, any infection – and monitor the health of the fetus. During these consultations, women are prescribed on hygiene and nutrition to increase their health earlier and following to delivery. They can also improve a birth plan laying out how to reach care and what to do in case of an emergency case.

Poverty, malnutrition, poverty, and entity abuse may take place to damaged cognitive and developmental problems across childhood. In other words, if a would-be mother is not in optimal health during the prenatal period or the fetus is unprotected to the teratogen, the baby is more likely to confront health or behavioral difficulties, or even death. The atmosphere in which the mom supplies for the fetus is critical to its welfare well after pregnancy and birth.

Prescribed drugs taken during gestation such as tetracycline, streptomycin, some anti-depressive pills, the synthetic estrogen, progestin, Accutane, and over-the-counter medicines such as diet pills, can be resulted in teratogenic outcomes for the developing fetus /embryo. In addition, high quantity of aspirin is responsible for maternal and fetal bleeding, although low-dose aspirin is usually not harmful.

Newborns whose mothers use heroin during the gestational period often exhibit withdrawal symptoms at birth and are more likely to have attention problems and health issues as they grow up. Use of stimulants like methamphetamine and cocaine during pregnancy are linked to a number of problems for the child such as low birth weight and small head circumference and motor and cognitive behavioral delays, as well as behavioral problems across childhood. The American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry found that 6 year-olds whose mothers had smoked during pregnancy scored lower on an intelligence test than children whose mothers had not.

Cigarette smoking during pregnancy can have a multitude of detrimental effects on the health and development of the offspring. Common results of smoking during pregnancy include pre-term births, low birth weights, fetal and neonatal deaths, respiratory problems, and sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), as well as increased risk for cognitive impairment, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and other behavioral problems. Also, in a study published in the International Journal of Cancer, children whose mothers smoked during pregnancy experienced a 22% risk increase for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Although alcohol use in careful moderation (one to two servings a few days a week) during pregnancy is not generally known to cause fetal alcohol spectrum disorder (FASD), the US Surgeon General advises against the consumption of alcohol at all during pregnancy. Excessive alcohol use during pregnancy can cause FASD, which commonly consist of physical and cognitive abnormalities in the child such as facial deformities, defective limbs, face, and heart, learning problems, below average intelligence, and intellectual disability (ID).

Although HIV/AIDS can be transmitted to offspring at different times, the most common time that mothers pass on the virus is during pregnancy. During the perinatal period, the embryo/fetus can contract the virus through the placenta.

Gestational diabetes is directly linked to obesity in offspring through adolescence. Additionally, children whose mom had diabetes are more likely to develop Type II diabetes. Mothers who have gestational diabetes have a high chance of giving birth to very large infants (10 pounds or more).

Because the fetus's nutrition is based on maternal vitamin protein, mineral, and total caloric intake, infants born to malnourished mothers are more likely to exhibit malformations. Additionally, maternal stress can affect the fetus both directly and indirectly. When a mother is under stress, physiological changes occur in the body that could harm the developing fetus. The mother is more likely to engage in behaviors that could badly affect the fetus, such as tobacco smoking, drug use, and alcohol abuse.

Childbirth:

Genital herpes is passed to the offspring through the birth canal during delivery. In pregnancies where the mother is infected with the virus, 25% of babies delivered through an infected birth canal become brain damaged, and 1/3 die. HIV/AIDS can also be transmitted during childbirth through contact with the mother's body fluids. Mothers in developed countries may often elect to undergo a cesarean section to reduce the risk of transmitting the virus through the birth canal, but this option is not always accessible in developing states.

Postpartum period:

All over the world, more than 08 million of the 136 million female giving birth each year suffer excessive bleeding after childbirth. This condition—medically referred to as (PPH) postpartum hemorrhage—causes one out of every four maternal deaths that occur annually and accounts for more maternal deaths than any other individual cause. Deaths due to postpartum hemorrhage disproportionately affect women in developing countries.

For every woman who dies from causes related to pregnancy, an estimated 20 to 30 encounter serious complications. At least 15 percent of all births are complicated by a potentially fatal condition. Women who survive such complications often require lengthy recovery times and may face lasting physical, psychological, social and economic consequences. Although many of these complications are unpredictable, almost all are treatable.

During the postpartum period, many mothers breastfeed their infants. Transmission of HIV/AIDS through breastfeeding is a huge issue in developing countries, namely in African countries. The majority of infants who contract HIV through breast milk do so within the first six weeks of life. However, in healthy mothers, there are many benefits for infants who are breastfed. The World Health Organization recommends that mothers breastfeed their children for the first two years of life, whereas the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians recommend that mothers do so for at least the first six months, and continue as long as is mutually desired. Infants who are breastfed by healthy mothers (not infected with HIV/AIDS) are less prone to infections such as Haemophilus influenza, Streptococcus pneumonia, Vibrio cholera, Escherichia coli, Giardia lamblia, group B streptococci, 

Staphylococcus epidermis, rotavirus, respiratory syncytial virus and herpes simplex virus-1, as well as gastrointestinal and lower respiratory tract infections and otitis media. Lower rates of infant mortality are observed in breastfed babies in addition to lower rates of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Decreases in obesity and diseases such as childhood metabolic disease, asthma, atopic dermatitis, Type I diabetes, and childhood cancers are also seen in children who are breastfed.

In many developing countries, complications of pregnancy and childbirth are the leading causes of death among women of reproductive age. A woman dies from complications from childbirth approximately every minute. According to the World Health Organization, in its World Health Report 2005, poor maternal conditions account for the fourth leading cause of death for women worldwide, after HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis. Most maternal deaths and injuries are caused by biological processes, not from disease, which can be prevented and have been largely eradicated in the developed world — such as postpartum ooze, which causes 34 percent of maternal deaths in the developing world but only 13% of maternal deaths in developed countries.

Although high-quality, accessible health care has made maternal death a rare event in developed countries, where only 1% of maternal deaths occur, these complications can often be fatal in the developing world because most important interference for safe motherhood is to make sure that a trained provider with midwifery skills is present at every birth, that transport is available to referral services, and that quality emergency obstetric care is available. In the year of 2008, 342,900 women died while they are pregnant or from childbirth globally. Although the number is huge, this was a compelling drop from 1980, when 526,300 mothers died from the same causes. This improvement was caused by lower pregnancy rates in some countries; higher income, which improves nutrition and access to health care; more education for women; and the increasing availability of "skilled birth attendants" — people with training in basic and emergency obstetric care — to help women give birth. The situation was especially led by improvements in large countries like India and China, which helped to drive down the overall death rates.

Maternal health problems also include complications from childbirth that do not result in death. For every woman that dies during childbirth, approximately 20 suffer from infection, injury, or disability.

Almost 50% of the births in developing countries still take place without a medically skilled attendant to aid the mother, and the ratio is even higher in South Asia. Women in Sub-Saharan Africa mainly rely on traditional birth attendants (TBAs), who have little or no formal health care training. In recognition of their role, some countries and non-governmental organizations are making efforts to train TBAs in maternal health topics, in order to improve the chances for better health outcomes among mothers and babies.

Breastfeeding provides women with several long-term benefits. Women who breastfeed experience better glucose levels, lipid metabolism, and blood pressure, and lose pregnancy weight faster than those who do not. Additionally, women who breastfeed experience lower rates of breast cancer, ovarian cancer, and type 2 diabetes. However, it is important to keep in mind that breastfeeding provides substantial benefits to women who are not infected with HIV. In countries where HIV/AIDS rates are high, such as South Africa and Kenya, the virus is a leading cause of maternal mortality, especially in mothers who breastfeed.[14] A complication is that many HIV-infected mothers cannot afford formula, and thus have no way of preventing transmission to the child through breast milk or avoiding health risks for themselves. In cases like this, mothers have no choice but to breastfeed their infants regardless of their knowledge of the harmful effects.