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HealthScouter Pregnancy: Pregnancy Stages and New Mother Self Advocate Guide
HealthScouter Pregnancy: Pregnancy Stages and New Mother Self Advocate Guide
HealthScouter Pregnancy: Pregnancy Stages and New Mother Self Advocate Guide
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HealthScouter Pregnancy: Pregnancy Stages and New Mother Self Advocate Guide

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For the most honest, objective opinion, HealthScouter provides a patient's view of
the most common medical problems. Including hundreds of quotes, questions, and answers from patients themselves, this guide provides comprehensive information about a single condition for from perspective that matters: the patient's perspective. Understand how current patients approach their medical challenges, and help
overcome your own. This reference will help you see through obscure medical jargon and limited treatment options and empower you to better understand the issues that really matter: Diagnosis + Symptoms + What to Expect + Treatment Options +
Medical Terminology

LanguageEnglish
PublisherEquity Press
Release dateNov 14, 2011
ISBN9781603322614
HealthScouter Pregnancy: Pregnancy Stages and New Mother Self Advocate Guide

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    HealthScouter Pregnancy - Equity Press

    Pregnancy

    Equity Press-HealthScouter.com

    5055 Canyon Crest Drive

    Riverside, California 92507

    www.healthscouter.com

    Purchasing this book entitles you to free updates at www.healthscouter.com/Pregnancy

    Edited By: Shana McKibbin

    Includes Pregnancy from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy

    Pregnancy

    ISBN 978-1-60332-261-4

    Edited Components are Copyright (c) 2009 Equity Press

    Smashwords Edition

    Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled GNU Free Documentation License.

    HealthScouter and Equity Press do not provide medical advice. The contents of this book are for informational purposes only and are not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Always seek advice from a qualified physician or health care professional about any medical concern, and do not disregard professional medical advice because of anything you may read in this book or on a HealthScouter Web site. The views of individuals quoted in this book are not necessarily those of HealthScouter or Equity Press.

    Equity Press does not endorse any company or product, and listing on the HealthScouter Web site is not linked to corporate sponsorship. We do not make a claim to being comprehensive or up to date. If you would like to recommend information to include in this book, please contact us – we would be very happy to hear from you.

    Table of Contents

    Introduction

    Terminology

    Progression

    Initiation

    Prenatal Period

    Perinatal Period

    Postnatal Period

    Duration

    Childbirth

    Diagnosis

    Physiology

    First Trimester

    Second Trimester

    Third Trimester

    Prenatal Development and Sonograph Images

    Physiological Changes in Pregnancy

    Hormonal Changes

    Musculoskeletal Changes

    Physical Changes

    Cardiovascular Changes

    Respiratory Changes

    Metabolic Changes

    Renal Changes

    Management

    Nutrition

    Weight Gain

    Immunological Tolerance

    Drugs in Pregnancy

    Sexuality During Pregnancy

    Abortion

    Complications and Complaints

    Context

    Pre-eclampsia

    Diagnosis

    Epidemiology

    Causes

    Pathogenesis

    Differential Diagnosis

    Complications

    Treatment and Prevention

    Magnesium Sulfate

    Dietary and Nutritional Factors

    Aspirin Supplementation

    Exercise

    Immunological Tolerance

    Pregnancy Over Age 50

    Medical Considerations

    Mythological References

    Cases of Pregnancy Over Age 50

    Debate

    Postpartum Depression

    Postpartum Exhaustion

    Relation to Baby Blues

    Symptoms

    Risk Factors

    Evolutionary Psychological Hypothesis

    Effects on the Parent-Infant Relationship

    Security

    Attachment Study

    Prevention

    Nutrition

    Treatment

    Postpartum Psychosis

    References: Pregnancy

    References: Pre-eclampsia

    References: Pregnancy over age 50

    References: Postpartum Depression

    GNU Free Documentation License

    Introduction

    Pregnancy (latin graviditas) is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the uterus of a female. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets. Human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies. Obstetrics is the surgical field that studies and cares for high risk pregnancy. Midwifery is the non-surgical field that cares for pregnancy and pregnant women.

    Childbirth usually occurs about 38 weeks after fertilization (conception ), i.e., approximately 40 weeks from the last normal menstrual period (LNMP) in humans. The World Health Organisation defines normal term for delivery as between 37 weeks and 42 weeks. The calculation of this date involves the assumption of a regular 28-day period.

    Terminology

    One scientific term for the state of pregnancy is gravid , and a pregnant female is sometimes referred to as a gravida .[1] Neither word is used in common speech. Similarly, the term parity (abbreviated as para) is used for the number of previous successful live births. Medically, a woman who has never been pregnant is referred to as a nulligravida , and in subsequent pregnancies as multigravida or multiparous .[2][3][4] Hence during a second pregnancy a woman would be described as gravida 2, para 1 and upon delivery as gravida 2, para 2. Incomplete pregnancies of abortions, miscarriages or stillbirths account for parity values being less than the gravida number, whereas a multiple birth will increase the parity value. Women who have never carried a pregnancy achieving more than 20 weeks of gestation age are referred to as nulliparous.[5] The medical term for a woman who is pregnant for the first time is primipara .[6]

    The term embryo is used to describe the developing offspring during the first eight weeks following conception , and the term fetus is used from about two months of development until birth.[7][8]

    In many societies' medical or legal definitions, human pregnancy is somewhat arbitrarily divided into three trimester periods, as a means to simplify reference to the different stages of prenatal development. The first trimester carries the highest risk of miscarriage (natural death of embryo or fetus ). During the second trimester, the development of the fetus can be more easily monitored and diagnosed. The beginning of the third trimester often approximates the point of viability, or the ability of the fetus to survive, with or without medical help, outside of the uterus.[9]

    Progression

    Initiation

    Pregnancy occurs as the result of the female gamete or oocyte being penetrated by the male gamete spermatozoon in a process referred to, in medicine, as fertilization , or more commonly known as conception . After the point of fertilization it is referred to as an egg. The fusion of male and female gametes usually occurs through the act of sexual intercourse. However, the advent of artificial insemination and in vitro fertilisation have also made achieving pregnancy possible in cases where sexual intercourse does not result in fertilization (e.g. through choice or male/female infertility).

    Prenatal Period

    Prenatal or antenatal development is the process in which an embryo or fetus (or foetus) gestates during pregnancy, from fertilization until birth. Often, the terms fetal development , foetal development, or embryology are used in a similar sense.

    After fertilization, the embryogenesis starts. In humans, when embryogenesis finishes, by the end of the 10th week of gestational age, the precursors of all the major organs of the body have been created. Therefore, the following period, the fetal period, is described both topically on one hand, i.e., by organ, and strictly chronologically on the other, by a list of major occurrences by weeks of gestational age.

    Perinatal Period

    Perinatal defines the period occurring around the time of birth, specifically from 22 completed weeks (154 days) of gestation (the time when birth weight is normally 500g) to seven completed days after birth. [10]

    Legal regulations in different countries include gestation age beginning from 16 - 22 weeks (five months) before birth.

    Postnatal Period

    Postnatal (Latin for 'after birth', from post meaning after and natalis meaning of birth) is the period beginning immediately after the birth of a child and extending for about six weeks. A more correct term would be postpartum period, as it refers to the mother (whereas postnatal refers to the infant). Less frequently used is puerperium.

    Biologically, it is the time after birth, a time in which the mother's body, including hormone levels and uterus size, return to prepregnancy conditions. Lochia is post-partum vaginal discharge, containing blood, mucus, and placental tissue.

    During the first stages of this period, the newborn also starts his/her adaptation

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