Women who are pregnant are in high alert to different life-threatening health and environment issues. That's why to prevent these different threats to pregnancy, physicians always remind their patients to take good care of their health. Yet it seems that the biggest and scariest threat to pregnant women are ignored.
Is it enough to have proper pregnant women diet or exercise to protect the mother and baby? Read to know more of the biggest danger every pregnant woman can experience.
Pregnant women are much aware of what they do and eat as they aim to be as healthier as possible for them and their babies. Aside from taking several supplements, many pregnant women avoid some food like sushi and omit nail polish and hair dye as everything is like a "life-or-death" choice of activity, as per Red Book magazine. Yet many don't know the biggest and scariest threat to pregnant women that the omissions of some common no-no activities seem least threatening.
Pregnancy-related mortality is on the rise. However, a new report in the American Journal of Public Health published that it's not pregnancy itself that kills new moms but its murder, suicide and accidental injuries.
The research involved all pregnant women in Philadelphia who died from "their pregnancy either mid-pregnancy or within a year of being pregnant." The incidents happened between 2010 and 2014 where half of the death reports were from the preceding causes.
The three common lines on these deaths are mental illness, violent partners and substance abuse. Most noteworthy is that they were even common in the deaths of pregnant women that don't involve suicide, overdoses and homicide.
According to Boston University School of Medicine's obstetrics and gynecology assistant professor and lead study author Dr. Pooja Mehta, pregnant women's death from medical causes had histories of partner violence, serious mental illness and substance use disorder. Furthermore, Mehta added that the worst part is the deaths are preventable if family, doctors and friends "knew what signs to look for" and what proper questions to ask.
As per March of Dimes, pregnant women are also prone to domestic violence because they are "physically vulnerable." Harvard Medical School's research, on the other hand, revealed that hormone fluctuations can make pregnant women depressed and make current mental illness more serious. This is due to the physical changes from pregnancy that can also make these new moms vulnerable to medical, mental and social aspects of pregnancy.
Meanwhile, the recent research do not ignore all the medical and environmental factors to have a healthy pregnancy but want these new moms to also rely on a wider framework to prevent "pregnancy-associated death." This serious threat to pregnant women need to be addressed to create awareness on what's exactly going on with the new mom and their baby.
