"Meconium Staining or a normal part of the progression of pregnancy depending on which stage of pregnancy you are. If it is a thin Meconium and if you are in advanced stage of labor and baby heart rate is fine, it is alright for us to continue labor and to anticipate a normal deliver as long as the progression of labor is good and the baby is continuously monitored. Thick Meconium in very early labor tends to be a problem in early labor because it will not case labor to progress though and Meconium could at any time be a sign that the baby is not happy and the outcomes in terms of delivery depends on terms of the history of the women, whether it is the first, second pregnancy or how rapidly she is laboring, is it a normal size baby? How far is she in labor, is it looking like she will deliver quickly, how bad is meconium. So it is not an easy answer to give. It has to be individualized and even with continuous monitoring there is always a risk that there may be some aspiration of the meconium. If going forwards, there is a little distress scenario involves. So there is no one answer for that. It has to be individualized for each person’s care"

"Maternal Health Services is the place where you get care for the mother and the newborn child. This is a place where you for Prepregnancy Care, Pregnancy care, delivery, post delivery. So most of the PHC’s depending on the locality you stay in , you get different level of services and we categorize them depending on the services provide d into primary secondary and tertiary units"

"Not all adverse fetal outcomes can be detected before childbirth. Some can be detected. We do testing for thyroid, sugars so that we prevent these adverse fetal outcomes. If we know a preexisting problem in the mothers then we know there is a problem to look out for certain conditions, say for example, if a mother develops a viral infection like rubella, there are tests to see if the baby is affected and that will then predict if the baby is going to have a problem after it is being born or not. That is a rare incident. Routinely we do scans at 12 week and 5 months to check if the babies are normal. This is one of the main ways to check what is the outcome of the baby is going to be at 12 weeks we are going to do a Down’s syndrome screening, scan and blood test to see what the baby to see if the baby is normal with regards to Down’s syndrome. Again at 18 to 20 weeks, we do scan which we call as anomaly scan were we check to see if the baby is looking anatomically normal. Through our scanning doctor will do a whole lot of scans to see if the baby is normal, not all abnormalities are present at that time sometimes we see that affect the baby is growing there are some things that are not quite right as the baby is growing, but for the most part, most problems are detected, by the 5th month, and most of the tests are detected by the way of ultrasound scans"

"When a woman wants to get pregnant, we want her to be in a healthy condition. If she has got any illnesses, once the pregnancy starts, it becomes difficult to try and treat those illness after the pregnancy starts and sometimes to investigate it after the pregnancy starts and you want to be in the best of health before the pregnancy so that you have a good pregnancy and a healthy baby and healthy baby as well. This will also affect how you recover for the delivery also. So maternal health is one of paramount importance in deciding how the pregnancy is going to go forward and how the pregnancy outcome as well. So healthy mother means healthy baby. Not just for pregnancy itself, it also has effect long term with regard to mothers health but with regard to baby’s health too"

"To improve Maternal Health means if you are planning for a pregnancy, I would suggest to see the obstetrician and gynecologists that they can make an assessment of your condition and see whether there are any other deficiencies that need to be corrected. If you have not had your vaccinations up to date, they can give you that and can reduce the risk of infection during pregnancy and infection affecting the baby during pregnancy. If they can asses if you are underweight and advice you with regards to your weight and if you are overweight or diabetic then you need to try and work on your weight and correct your sugars. Ofcourse the most important thing is that you shod be exercising everyday. Pregnancy and well being is of before pregnancy, during pregnancy and after pregnancy, man, woman and child, so if it is important to start look at exercise most patients don’t do exercise before they get pregnant and they suddenly they starts thinking about this diet, fitness, exercises during pregnancy and that is the wrong way of going about. So improve your health by eating healthy and thinking about diet and exercise before your pregnancy starts"

"Preeclampsia if it happens at the time of maturity, say when the pregnancy is termed beyond 34 weeks, then we deliver the mother and the baby and that should be a happy ending interms of the mother being well and the being well. Preeclampsia, I hope you understand when the mother develops high blood pressure in pregnancy and it typically happens in 20 weeks of pregnancy. So if this happens very early in pregnancy then we can extend the pregnancy to the extend we want because we want the baby to be matured when it is delivered ad we want the baby to survive on its own when it is delivered, we want to avoid the immaturities we can. There are conditions we have where the condition of the mother gets serious and we don’t want to continue the pregnancy, because counting pregnancy meaning risking the others left and at that time we are forced to deliver because ultimately the treatment of Preeclampsia is to remove the placenta, which is the trigger for the blood pressure. So to remove the placentas, we have to reeve the baby, no matter what stage the pregnancy is , if the mother’s life is at risks of the outcome of the pregnancy, the risk to the mother depends on the stage of pregnancy that she is if she is quite close to delivery, we will deliver her and not take any major risk with the mother’s life. But if she is so far from the delivery, then it means every day inside the uterus means 2 days outside the NICU, then we will try to push the pregnancy forward. So there will be a risk to the mother’s life, that we will be taking to a certain extend and similarly the baby who comes out early will go through a lot of struggle in the NICU and if it happens even before the baby is viable. The baby will not survive. So these are the risk of Preeclampsia on the other and the baby. This is one of the major worries of any mother during the pregnancy. High blood pressure in the mother also doesn’t allow the baby to grow well. So these babies are growth restricted, growth retreaded and they may run into trouble as well even though the mother is stable requiring delivery of the baby for its well being. So Preeclampsia is a delicate scenario that needs to be monitored and described on again individual basis"