When PREGNANCY BEGINS

PREGNANCY BEGINS

It occurs when one of the 300 million or more spermatozoa in teaspoonful of semen a healthy man ejaculates reaches an egg cell is only one way she contribute to protecting her child from birth by being in the best possible condition prior to pregnancy. She requires nothing very special but it does put added emphasis on individual, simple rules for good health, since now they are being the benefit of two people. Like anybody else, a mother-to-be should have regular periodic checkups. If the physician finds that all is well during such conditions, that reassurance adds to mental ease. If a condition is found that needs correction, it is all to the good that it is found and aborted early when it almost invariably is easier to correct. 

Food nutrition, vital for everyone, is certainly so for the woman who are looking forward to having a child. Maintaining proper weight is advisable. A daily quota of exercise beyond housework in which, of course, physical activity is important. To go walking, swimming, bicycling, doing something beyond the daily round of household chores a good exercise, provides change of pace, and is beneficial for both body and mind. Preventive medicine in terms of mother and child will be at its best known every woman is examined prior to every conception, whereas now usually only those with special problems seek such attention. The fact is that while maternal mortality has steadily declined, infant mortality is still too high.

Forty years ago, about 65 mothers died for every 10,000 births in the United States; today there are less than 4 deaths for each 10,000 deliveries. In the University of Chicago's Lying-In Hospital, only 13 mothers died during a 9-year period in which 34,000 deliveries took place, and only 6 of them died from conditions due to pregnancy and childbirth. Much has been done to make pregnancy and childbirth safer and more comfortable for the mother. The need now is for ways and means to diminish infant mortality and for measures to actively promote the good health of the growing fetus. The highly desirable to carefully prepare the maternal soil each time, the seed is implanted.

 During a preconception health inventory, adequacy of diet can be checked, any systemic disease can be detected and treated, any endocrine imbalance can be corrected-and such measures should do more to insure a healthy child than when carried out pregnancy is not a disease state. It is a healthy condition. And any woman who enters it in good health can expect to find it pleasurable. Upon completion of the sexual act, it may be helpful for the woman to elevate her legs and keep them elevated for a short time, as a means of helping the semen to reach and be retained in the inner portion of the vagina. No douches of any kind should be used.

Some men fail to produce an adequate number of sperm if they have intercourse too frequently. Therefore, it often helps for an infertile couple to refrain from coitus for a week before the day of ovulation, and on that day to have intercourse both in the morning and at night. Try following these suggestions before you become convinced you have a difficult infertility problem. If you still do not succeed in having a baby, both of you should consult a physician or a fertility clinic which he may recommend. 

It was once believed that inevitably the wife was at fault in childlessness. It is now known that quite often the trouble may lie with the husband. And it is also known that frequently when both partners seek help, minor treatment for both may raise their joint fertility level enough to assure success where even major treatment for one or the other may fail. (Planned Parenthood-World Population, 515 Madison Ave., New York, N.Y. 10023, can recommend clinics and private physicians specializing in the treatment of infertility.)

Don't simply blame yourself or your spouse for your childlessness. Find out what the trouble is. It may be readily correctable. Sometimes it may be correctable with some difficulty-but correctable. And if your condition cannot be corrected, take thought of that vow you made, "for better or worse." It will not be for worse if, having acted intelligently, sought the reason for failure, found it, determined that it could not be overcome, you go on, knowing you have done all you could, to philosophically and lovingly join in adopting a child to love as your own.