When we talk about prenatal visits, we logically think of the gynecologist who tracks our pregnancy. That's why I was surprised that The AEP recommends a prenatal visit to the pediatrician, in the third trimester of pregnancy.
The evidence shows that when these prenatal preventive visits are carried out there are obvious benefits. Preconception counseling and prenatal care have proven useful for improving the health of the mother and the child in the following aspects:
The prenatal visit by the pediatrician in the third trimester of pregnancy serves to improve the parent-pediatrician relationship. Knowing each other, exchanging views, expectations ... I think it can effectively improve the relationship (or, conversely, break it if the parents consider that the pediatrician's profile does not fit what they want).
This visit to the pediatrician before the baby is born increase breastfeeding rate. Ideally, the medical staff (pediatricians, but also gynecologists, midwives, nurses ...) should know and offer the necessary and truthful information regarding breastfeeding (and artificial).
It also decreases the number of visits to pediatric emergency services when the baby is already born. I imagine that the parents' safety in certain aspects, the pediatrician's recommendations, the raising of doubts and fears by the parents ... have a lot to do with this point.
The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends conducting a prenatal visit since 1984, which remains until today, with some objectives that we can extend to any field in which this visit is carried out:
- Start the parent-pediatrician relationship.
- Inform about what a newborn child needs (ajuar) and describe certain skills that must be acquired.
- Inform about breastfeeding and what usually happens in childbirth.
- Give advice on favorable lifestyle.
- Check that pregnancy is being adequately controlled.
- Solve doubts and convey confidence.
This last point I consider to be essential, since experience shows that in the prenatal visit the parents express their doubts more frequently than in the first visit with the newborn baby. In fact it usually lasts longer than the first visit, especially if it is both parents who attend.
With this idea of adding to the benefits of such visits, PrevInfad (Recommended preventive and health promotion activities for children and adolescents), in the framework of the AEP, recommends them.
He also recommends that pediatricians should not miss the opportunities that arise in their usual practice to carry out preconception and prenatal prevention in a simple way and advise healthy lifestyle habits to adolescents who come to their consultation and who will be future mothers.
It is a very interesting idea, and if the information that pediatricians can give us is adequate, it can help many women.
In the blog we have often asked ourselves whose task it is to advise mothers about breastfeeding, and in my opinion this is the task of everyone, of many people around us, including doctors who follow up on our pregnancy, those who repair our delivery and those who care for the baby in the first days of life.
However I have the impression that this practice is rather little, very little extended. I agreed in the third trimester on a visit by my eldest daughter, but we didn't comment on the pregnancy, except the doctor's luck for the approaching birth.
Another issue that would make the extension of this difficult Prenatal visit of pregnant women to the pediatrician it would be the situation in which pediatricians work, since pediatricians are lacking in Spain and due to misfortunes they often attend faster than would be necessary due to the agglomeration of patients.
You, do you know of any pregnant woman who has performed a prenatal visit to the pediatrician? Would you join this proposal, as if it were a "preparation for motherhood" more?
