Pre Conception & Genetic Counselling

Parenthood is a big responsibility and one of the first steps towards preparing for this role can be adopting a healthy life style. Pregnancy is a very important chapter in a couple’s life. A comprehensive “Pre-Pregnancy” check-up helps in preparing a couple for one of the most important phases of their lives. It is a good practice to meet up with your doctor at least 3 months prior to getting pregnant to ensure that both partners are in perfect health and are prepared to welcome a new baby into their family. The parent’s present health, past health issues, lifestyle and presence of any familial diseases can affect the chances of having a healthy child. In a “Pre-Pregnancy” check-up, all these issues can be thoroughly and individually addressed to ensure a good outcome for the forthcoming pregnancy. Also, couples have many doubts about pregnancy related issues which may arise from there’s narration of incidents in their pregnancies or from their own experiences in past pregnancies which have lingered in their minds and are causing confusion. A dedicated consultation to clarify all such doubts and get one’s health and lifestyle assessed can go a long way in ensuring that every pregnancy results in a “Happy Mother and Healthy Child”! A lot is known and accepted regarding the need and relevance of a proper protocol for caring for the pregnant woman in terms of her medical check-ups, diet and rest issues. We all know that caring for a pregnant woman helps in preventing complications of pregnancy and leads to the birth of a healthy baby. Yet, what we all must understand is that optimising the couple’s health and lifestyle prior to embarking upon a pregnancy can go a long way in preventing problems in pregnancy. The old saying of “Prevention is Better Than Cure” stands good in preventing many issues in pregnancy by dealing with them diligently before the pregnancy starts.

Every mother planning for a pregnancy should be evaluated for her baseline values of haemoglobin, sugars, thyroid functions, maternal weight, immunization status, A detailed dental checkup prior to pregnancy will help in optimising dental health as there are a variety of dental problems that women are more prone to experience during pregnancy.

Another important issue that is best tackled by a thorough work up before embarking upon a pregnancy is the issue of screening for genetic diseases. Some couples have known genetic disorders in their families and they may be worried about recurrence of such problems in their offspring. Many genetic case work ups need several weeks to months to be completed as the results take time. Once the couple is pregnant, it is a race against time to establish these results and many times the situation is extremely distressing when unexpected adverse results appear at a time when the pregnancy is advanced.

A proper pre pregnancy work up in suspected genetic cases helps in making a clear plan of prenatal testing and further follow up with adequate counseling of the couple to prevent any unexpected results. Many couples are “Consanguineous” or married within a larger family so that they have a common gene pool. People belonging to one family share a common gene pool and hence the chances of them carrying similar defective genes are high. This places them at a risk of having a baby who will manifest symptoms genetic diseases as it is likely to inherit similar defective genes from both parents. Confirmed reassurance about the condition gene. All this helps a lot in alleviating physical and mental suffering to parents, fetus and the whole family through a pregnancy.

Women who have unhealthy lifestyle issues like smoking or drinking can be advised to give up these habits as both tobacco and alcohol can harm their baby as well as their own health in the long run. It is important here even for the husband’s to sit back and contemplate whether they should also give up similar habits. This will have long term beneficial effects on the couple’s general health and such positive steps will help in improving their interpersonal relationship as well. This will help them become better partners and better parents.