Child Development From Infancy to Adolescence. Laura E. Levine
has shown that exposing a fetus to extra stimulation (for example, playing music near the pregnant woman’s stomach) can stimulate advanced cognitive development. False
Many other beliefs about pregnancy have been handed down from generation to generation. Maybe you have heard that a pregnant woman shouldn’t raise her arms above her head because the umbilical cord could strangle her baby or that a pregnant woman shouldn’t get a flu shot. Both of these ideas are wrong. You should know that a woman’s movements do not affect the movement of the umbilical cord and that being pregnant suppresses a woman’s immune system putting her at higher risk of becoming severely ill or even dying if she gets the flu. Rather than being harmful, a flu shot protects her and her unborn baby during the pregnancy and gives the newborn some protection from the flu after birth. There is a great deal of information available on pregnancy but also a good deal of misinformation, so we remind you of the importance of knowing the source of the information you rely on.
Check Your Understanding
Knowledge Questions
1 What occurs in each of the three stages of prenatal development?
2 What is an ultrasound, and why is it used?
3 What are some ways that medical science can help infertile couples?
Critical Thinking
Given the tremendous amount of information that is available about pregnancy, what do you think would be the most effective way to get accurate information about prenatal development to pregnant women? Why do you think this would be effective?
Health and Risks in Pregnancy
>> LQ 4.2 What are some risks and health issues during pregnancy?
In this section, we describe some of the things that a woman can do to help ensure her health and the well-being of her baby during pregnancy. In addition to getting early and continuing prenatal care and being careful about her diet, the woman needs to avoid potentially harmful substances such as tobacco and alcohol. There are critical periods in early development when these substances are particularly damaging.
Three Trimesters of Pregnancy
The three stages of prenatal development tell us what is happening to the developing fetus during the pregnancy. However, from the point of view of the pregnant woman, these 9 months are divided in a different way, into 3-month periods called trimesters, each of which has its own characteristics.
During the first trimester, it may not be apparent to other people that the woman is pregnant, but changes in the level of her hormones can cause fatigue, breast tenderness, and morning sickness, a nausea that often subsides as the day progresses. In the second trimester, most women start to feel better and the pregnancy begins to become apparent as the fetus grows larger. The woman now feels the first fetal movements, called the quickening. In the third trimester, the fetus continues to grow and the woman becomes more tired and uncomfortable (Chye, Teng, Hao, & Seng, 2008). At the end of this trimester, the fetus drops lower as it begins to move into position to begin the birth process.
Miscarriage
It is not uncommon for a pregnancy to result in miscarriage, which is the natural loss of a pregnancy before 20 weeks gestational age of the fetus (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2016c). Genetic abnormalities are the most common cause of miscarriage, but in many cases the cause is unknown. However, when medical professionals can identify a cause, it is easier for women to come to terms with the loss, and knowing the cause relieves some of the initial distress (Nikcevic & Nicolaides, 2014).
Miscarriage: The natural loss of a pregnancy before the fetus reaches a gestational age of 20 weeks.
Gestational age: The age of the developing fetus, measured from the mother’s last menses.
Women utilize a number of coping strategies to deal with the loss of a pregnancy (Van, 2012). Most talk with others about their loss, and talking with another woman who has herself experienced the loss of a pregnancy can be particularly helpful. Not only is there a feeling of shared understanding, but if the other woman has subsequently carried a pregnancy to term, it also provides reassurance and a sense of hope in the situation. Partners or others who feel they don’t know what to say or do should be aware that “just being there” is an important and effective way to help the grieving process (Van, 2012, p. 82). Recurrent miscarriage affects only 1% to 3% of couples (Alijotas-Reig & Garrido-Gimenez, 2013), so most women who have a miscarriage can take comfort from the fact that they will be able to have children through a future pregnancy.
In some cases, a woman may choose to terminate a pregnancy by having an induced abortion, a medical procedure that uses medicine or surgery to remove an embryo or fetus and placenta from a woman’s uterus (U.S. National Library of Medicine, 2016a). Worldwide, about 25% of pregnancies end in abortion and in the United States it is about 19% (Guttmacher Institute, 2016, 2017b). Abortion is a difficult choice for a woman to make, but the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on Mental Health and Abortion concluded that adult women with an unplanned pregnancy who have an abortion during the first trimester have no worse psychological outcome than those who deliver the baby (APA, 2014). A negative reaction after an abortion is more likely if the woman has little support for the procedure, has had previous mental health problems, or if the pregnancy was wanted (APA, 2014).
Abortion: A medical procedure that uses medicine or surgery to remove an embryo or fetus and placenta from a woman’s uterus.
Maternal Health and Well-Being
The things that help protect the health and well-being of a woman at any point in her life also help ensure a healthy pregnancy, but even before she gets pregnant, preconception care can reduce or prevent many threats to the health of a woman or her baby (Mehta-Lee, Bernstein, Harrison, & Merkatz, 2013). She should stop smoking, drinking, or using illicit or recreational drugs, eat a healthy diet, and get the right amount of physical activity and sleep. In consultation with her physician, she also should evaluate the safety of any over-the-counter or prescription medications that she uses and discuss possible health risk factors in her workplace or home environment.
Prenatal care. Regular visits to a doctor throughout a woman’s pregnancy are essential to good prenatal care. What do you think we could do in the United States to help ensure that more pregnant women get this type of care?
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Although seeing a physician on a regular basis, beginning early in a pregnancy, is one of the best ways to avoid problems later, each year nearly one million American women give birth without having received adequate medical care during their pregnancy (Health Resources and Services Administration, n.d.). For instance, Black, Hispanic, and Native American women are more than twice as likely as White women to receive late or no prenatal care, and women who do not receive prenatal care are 3 times more likely to give birth to a low-weight baby and 5 times more likely to have an infant who dies (Child Trends, 2015b). Adolescents, women with less education, and those who are poor are also at higher risk for receiving late or no prenatal care (Gennaro, Melnyk, O’Connor, Gibeau, & Nadel, 2016; Ramirez, Thompson, & Vela, 2013). However, these risk factors often co-occur, placing some women at an even greater risk of having inadequate prenatal care. For instance, women who have less education are also more likely to be poor. Improving the quality of prenatal care available in poorer neighborhoods, expanding educational efforts among pregnant women to make them aware of the importance of prenatal care, and increasing