A Healthy Pregnancy: Preparing for the Blessed Event

Baptist Health La Grange: Preparing for the Blessed Event

Obstetrician MATT MCDANALD describes how Baptist Health La Grange prepares expectant mothers and their families for pregnancy, providing a comfortable labor and delivery setting.

A Healthy Pregnancy: Preparing for the Blessed Event Health Talks Transcript

Matt McDanald, MD, OB/GYN

It’s important to plan ahead for a pregnancy so the mom can decrease risk factors that she has to maintain a healthy pregnancy and do interventions that will help her have a successful pregnancy for the nine months. Certainly, lifestyle choices are very important in pregnancy. In the months leading up to attempting pregnancy you should stop drinking, stop smoking, start exercising to promote heathy habits and a healthy pregnancy. Here at Baptist Health La Grange, we offer prenatal classes free of charge to those who deliver with us, and those classes range from anything from all about labor, to what is an epidural, postpartum, and even a sibling class for parents who already have children and want to make that transition to home much easier. We feel like that gives those patients extra resources to prepare so they are more prepared when the baby comes. We offer private in-room LDRs and rooming in of the baby with each mom while she is here. Often times the same nurse that cares for you during labor will be the same nurse caring for you on the postpartum unit as well. Socially, this is more like in the old days where parents didn’t have a nursery with a warmer with lots of nurses and lots of lights. We certainly use mom as the warmer, and the baby lies on the mom’s chest skin to skin to promote bonding and warmth and the beginning of a relationship.