Get News & Updates Directly To Your Inbox
Delicious recipes, nutrition tips and "ask the dietitian."
Find A Doctor Or Hospital In Your Network.
Think of it as your before, during and after wellness plan. There are a lot of steps you can take, and there are ways your family and friends can join in to help.
“Pregnancy is a life-changing experience, and it’s important that you have the best information from the start,” says the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.
Some things are important from preconception until after the baby is born:
Get started by focusing on good health to prepare for a healthy pregnancy. These five steps can help while you’re trying to get pregnant:
Download our Perinatal Wellness Guidelines for more information about staying healthy during pregnancy.
Your HealthLiving a healthy life and keeping doctor’s visits are key while you’re pregnant. You’re more likely to have a healthy birth if you have a healthy pregnancy, says the American Academy of Family Physicians. Some items to talk to your doctor about:
Baby’s HealthYour doctor will track your baby at all stages during your pregnancy, says the American Academy of Pediatrics. This may include:
New moms worry about many things. Being responsible for a baby can be stressful and overwhelming.
“Disrupted sleep and being overtired can amplify these feelings. The best thing you can do is accept help from your partner, family and friends — even if they’re not doing things exactly the same way you do — and then rest and recharge while someone else is caring for your baby,” says Shari Lawson, M.D., medical director of general obstetrics and gynecology at Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Lawson suggests additional tips for feeling better mentally and physically:
You may have heard of the “baby blues.” If you’re feeling very sad and anxious, and it doesn’t go away, you might have post-partum depression. If you think you may have post-partum depression, it’s important to get help. Talk to your doctor about how you’re feeling and what kind of help you may need.
From babyhood to preschool and beyond, keeping your child healthy means following a vaccine schedule. It’s designed to protect against serious diseases, like polio, whooping cough and mumps. Those diseases can result in a hospital stay, or even death.
It’s important to make sure your child is fully vaccinated against these vaccine-preventable diseases. That means finishing the whole series of recommended shots at the right time. Studies have shown they are safe. But veering from the shot schedule is not.
For quick reference on the immunization schedule for children and more, download our Children’s Wellness Guidelines.