Routine prenatal care is not a luxury or indulgence. It’s something both you and your baby need.
Just as a gardener waters, nurtures and cares for the seeds planted in rich, fertile soil, your baby — who is even smaller at conception than those seeds — needs the same dedication and attention to insure its prenatal growth and development in the womb. We help make that happen.
The Importance of Prenatal Care
Whether this is your first pregnancy, or you’re already familiar with the whole process of giving birth, the importance of prenatal care can’t be emphasized enough. No matter how typical your pregnancy is, or how little risk your baby is exposed to health-wise and genetically, proper vigilance from conception to safe delivery is vital.
Our specialists are trained in every facet of women’s health. We excel in the fields of fertility, obstetrics, gynecology and pelvic surgery. Not only do we offer optimum prenatal care, but we treat you, the patient, the same way we would treat our own mothers, sisters, daughters and all other females in our lives. Having successfully delivered thousands of babies, our priority is to safeguard not only your continuing well-being, but that of your baby. We offer every advantage currently known to women’s medicine, all with a compassionate and dedicated approach.
What Can You Expect From Cherokee Women’s Health?
From your very first prenatal care visit, we treat you with the utmost care and respect, beginning with the initial pleasant greeting you receive the moment you walk through our doors. We’re professionals, but first and foremost, we’re human, just like you. We want you to feel as comfortable as possible so that you can establish a trusting relationship with your physician, and with his or her assisting staff.
How Can You Prepare For Your First Visit?
Bring your medical history and background. They’re important. That information gives us an idea of how closely we need to scrutinize your progress. It can help us decide what tests we should run during your first few prenatal care appointments. Your information and subsequent test results, if merited, determine whether your pregnancy should be considered high risk, moderate risk or risk free. No matter what the results, we are qualified to treat all levels.
What Happens During Routine Prenatal Care Appointments?
Our standard examinations during each visit include the following:
- Blood tests
- Blood pressure monitoring
- Listening to your baby’s heartbeat
- Urinalysis
- Abdominal measurement to verify normal fetal growth
- Pelvic examinations when necessary
- Addressing any patient concerns.
When you’re ready for your first ultrasound, our prenatal care physicians are among the few who are fully accredited in the use of the most modern up-to-date 4D ultrasound. This procedure allows you to see your growing baby in full detail. It also lets our trained specialists evaluate your baby’s progress, detecting any potential problems that might occur as it matures from embryo to fetus, and finally to the infant you’ll cradle in your arms.
What Other Routine Prenatal Care Services Are Available?
We check for gestational diabetes, anemia and any genetic abnormalities. By conscientiously monitoring both your baby’s development along with your own, we want to relieve you of any stress or worry. When you leave after an appointment with us, we want you to do so with complete peace of mind.
We also offer the following prenatal care services:
- Nutrition and diet: Our experts will help you maintain a healthy weight throughout your pregnancy, insuring a less complicated delivery. We provide information on regular, vegetarian, gluten free, vegan, and holistic nutrition. We take every precaution to insure that you and your baby receive the proper nourishment you need to sustain a trouble-free pregnancy.
- Physical therapy: On-staff professionals will guide you in preparing your body for labor. Their recommended prenatal exercises and fitness regimens will minimize any possible trauma your body might experience during delivery, such as perineum damage, pelvic organ prolapse, or urinary incontinence. Their expertise has been proven invaluable, reducing previously unavoidable pelvic injury while giving birth.
- Midwifery: You may be more comfortable with a nurse-midwife to assist you during delivery. We will partner you with a highly skilled nurse midwife, who has decades of experience. As long as your pregnancy is uncomplicated and progressing within normal guidelines, this practitioner is available to you.
- Counsel and advice: No topic or concern you wish to broach regarding your pregnancy is trivial to us. We’re happy to address any subject, including such topics as breastfeeding, natural childbirth, having participants in the delivery room, umbilical cord blood banking, signs of postpartum depression, or circumcision if you are having a boy. You might be strongly opposed to routine afterbirth procedures, like a nurse washing your baby instead of leaving that first bath to you, or allowing it to have a pacifier in your absence. If it’s important to you, it’s important to us. We’ll answer your questions, dispense guidance as you need it and accommodate you to the best of our ability.
We’re Here for You
Getting you through your pregnancy with as little stress and complication as possible is our primary focus. We accomplish this goal successfully during every routine prenatal exam by treating you as the important and unique individual you are.
To schedule an appointment, please call us at 770.720.7733. For more information on prenatal care, visit Northside Hospital Cherokee.
