WHAT DO YOU EXPECT YOUR DOCTOR TO TELL YOU IN THE FIRST ANTENATAL CONSULTATION?

  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!