Routine Pregnancy Check-Up

Hi!

I am Dr. Masooma H Merchant, gynecologist, an obstetrician and laparoscopic surgeon. Today I will talk about a routine check-up during your pregnancy. If you miss your periods, first thing is to check your pregnancy at home with the help of the kit. Apart from this there other early symptoms of pregnancy after missed periods. Take 4-5 drops of your urine, put it into the kit and check for 2 lines. C and T are mentioned over the kit. C would have a line invariably and if you are pregnant, there would be a line on T as well. C and T line should be in the same color. In early pregnancy, T line would be less in color than C. And if there is the chance of tubal or ectopic pregnancy, the T line would be lighter in color than C.

If your results are positive, meet with an obstetrician. Doctor will go for a blood check-up to confirm pregnancy. Pregnancy test is done in that case when kit does not show the same color. Reports confirm us that at what stage the pregnancy is. Whether it is an ectopic pregnancy or a normal pregnancy or lost one. Another way to check is sonography. Regular blood pressure and weight gain will be checked by your doctor. The normal blood pressure ranges between 110/60 to 130/80. The weight gain is divided into trimester wise. First, second and third trimesters. Total weight gain in pregnancy is approximately 10-12 kg. Another test would be done to check whether the patient is not suffering from thalassemia. If there are any chances of thalassemia in mother then we also do the test for father because these straight could pass on to the baby.

Another thing we check is your blood group. If your blood group is positive, you are on the safer side. And if it is negative in mother and father both, then certain injections need to be taken. We also check your TSH which is for thyroid. We also do the test called VDRL. This is done check syphilis. Another test is done to check your urine routine. Because urine infection can also lead you to preterm labour. Next test is to be done to check HIV, hepatitis B and C. We also do vaginal examination. We check the length of the cervix. Dual marker blood test is done to check any DNA problem in baby. In 5th month sonography is done for baby to check him/her from top to toe. Another new test NIPT. This can be done 10 weeks onwards. All DNA abnormalities could be checked with this test.

In 9th months (37th week), we again check your hemoglobin. So, that if any problem has been seen, it can be corrected. Thyroid test would also be done again. Sonography is also done with the color doppler. If your pregnancy goes beyond 20 weeks, we again do your sonography just to make sure everything is going good. Now about medication, for starting 3 months, we only give folic acids. Then from 4th to 9th months, only 3 medicines are given that too varies from patient to patient. If there is any sort of query or if you need to get in touch with me, you can connect me through lybrate.com.

Thank You.