Think hard. You are
an educated professional enthusiastic expectant mother at 30 or above. But
unfortunately discussions regarding pregnancy and childbirth have been taboo at
home. Whatever knowledge you have gained till now is clearly from” hearsay” Now
suddenly everybody has some valuable knowledge to offer you regarding a
forbidden topic .Most of them will tell you about negative experiences that
they have heard of and a list of thing that you should not do to avoid poor
outcome. A time may come that you are filled with negative stories and you
constantly think how you could prevent anything bad from happening. You expect
your doctor to tell you all the things in a systematic manner that you should
or should not do to prevent all the nerve racking medical horror stories you
have heard.
So you go for the first antenatal consultation feeling
powerless vulnerable and totally dependent on the medical community. Typically
in a typical urban hospital set up the primary care provider is an obstetrician
who has trained for 6 years intensively to detect associated disease in
pregnancy and minimise complications arising from them. When you go and tell her
how powerless you feel and how worried you are that something bad is about to
happen and you expect her to give you a long list of things you should do or
not do
Well she is quite uneasy. There is no such divine list she
can offer you. Pregnancy is not a disease and complications happen in only 10
to 15% women and it is absolutely imperative to also add that no doctor however
competent can prevent most complications from happening. If miscarriages have
to happen they will happen ,if pregnancy induced hypertension has to happen it
will happen and if preterm labour has to
happen nobody on earth can prevent it. Then Why are
doctors required?
Many doctors also seek the answer to this question .There
are some doctors who feel so powerless and vulnerable that they wonder whether
their being or not being there could ever make a difference There are others
who take full advantage of the complexity of the situation and project
themselves as being always in control as
if to say that every good outcome is their credit and the fact that the mother did not have a
miscarriage or a growth restricted baby is because of the excellent care that
they have provided.
As expectant mothers it is very important that your
expectations match the reality .Our job as doctors is to make you feel confident
and project on the positive aspects of pregnancy care. There are some inherent
limitations of medicine because of which some serious complications cannot be
foreseen or prevented. But nevertheless you should empower yourself by knowledge, innate positivity and leading a
healthy lifestyle. You must have the confidence in yourself that things are
fine because things are usually fine most of the time. After all you don”s
sit on the driving seat of your car everyday thinking that
you will have an accident today!
