Savanna Neikirk- Prenatal care among pregnant women (1)
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Neikirk 1
Savanna Neikirk
Vesna Tanaskoski
English 111 Section MAA
2 May 2023
Prenatal Care Among Pregnant Women
Most women who are pregnant struggle with insurance costs and prenatal and
postnatal care. The majority of pregnancies cannot be planned, but when proper
prenatal care is available and used, all pregnancies can proceed with optimal outcomes.
Women of color struggle more with this than others. Women of any race should be able
to easily access available resources for assistance throughout pregnancy. Without
reliable health insurance a small prenatal treatment can wipe a person out financially.
The importance of prenatal care can result in both positive outcomes for both the
mother and the baby during pregnancy. Prenatal care should be affordable and
accessible to everyone.
Having health insurance can be a good thing but it's not always a good thing. You
would
think that having good health insurance, your doctor visits and all of the tests
they want you to do, would be covered as far as costs, but don't think that about
everything that your doctor provides. While you are pregnant, you have a lot of doctor's
appointments. At these appointments they may do different exams like ultrasounds,
drug tests at every appointment, frequent heart rate checks on the unborn infant, and
not to mention the major cost of all this is labor and delivery. All of these tests and
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exams add up, and they expect someone to pay for them. Insurance companies will not
always cover these costs, and if they don't, you are expected to pay.
The “Maternal and Child Health Journal” came out with a program in 2002 called
the “Unborn Child Ruling” and it resulted in the states children health insurance program
and has expanded over states.The program covers prenatal care for low-income
women without health insurance. Medicaid coverage is not available to latinas.
In the
article “The Impact of the State Children's Health Insurance Program for Unborn Child
Ruling Expansions on Foreign Born Latina Prenatal Care”
it compares Latina prenatal
care utilization and birth outcomes between six states which expanded coverage in
response to the ruling and ten states which did not. It explained that the policy analysis
examines cross-sectional pooled United States natality data from the pre-enactment
years (2000-2003) versus post enactment years (2004-2007) to estimate the effect of
the ruling on prenatal care. ( Drewry, Jonathan, pg. 1464). The outcomes did not
change. Pregnancies can be expensive especially for people who are another race
because of how hard it can be to get the care they need.
A woman's reproductive and sexual health needs and rights are largely
dependent on access to quality, affordable healthcare. It is a recognized human right for
women to receive prenatal care. In Brazil, they have offered the experience of women
regarding what they have recognized as barriers that trample their right to health, that is
limited personnel and medical equipment as a perception of neglect, timely delivery of
services, misinformation as a barrier to the exercise of health rights, and socioeconomic
barriers. ( Rodrigues, Camilia, pg. 14). The barriers affect women from rural
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communities with lower classes and education, as well as women of color, who are
already at higher health risks and receive inadequate prenatal care.
Women's health
should come first in pregnancy because if the mother is not doing well, then the fetus is
not doing well. A woman's life is just as valuable as well as the fetus.
Women need all
of their strength and energy during pregnancy. Pregnancy sucks everything that is good
into your unborn child. I also believe that women should have appropriate healthcare
services at a low cost even with insurance. Expecting mothers have to work harder to
provide a life and home for their unborn child. Mothers who are expecting have a lot of
duties to fulfill as far as getting everything ready for when their child is actually born.
They have to get their room ready and buy everything the child may need like cribs,
clothes, bottles, blankets, and pacifiers. Being a mother is a never ending process.
In the United States we have the highest maternal- mortality rate among the
nations. Pregnancy related deaths with American women have risen substantially over
the past thirty years. “Between 2000 and 2017, UNICEF reported that the US averaged
roughly nineteen maternal deaths per 100,000 live births.” ( Floyd, Jessica, pg. 20).
According to the CDC’s “Pregnancy Mortality Surveillance System”
,
the maternal
mortality rate rose one hundred and forty percent between 1987 and 2018 from 7.2 to
17.3. The system reported that in 2020, the maternal mortality in the United States has
climbed to 23.8 deaths. All of this may be because infants have many problems when
they are delivered because doctors are not doing enough testing while the fetus is still in
the womb. The birth of a child brings so much happiness for families. Yet, over 100,000
newborns die each year due to prematurity, diseases and other neonatal complications.
The newborn survival rate is even lower in other countries from lack of quality health
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Neikirk 4
care services and families are suffering from the consequences of drought. Women die
when giving birth as a result of complications during and throughout pregnancy and
childbirth. Most of these complications develop during pregnancy and most of it is
preventable if doctors catch them early enough. Other complications exist before
pregnancy but are worse during pregnancy, especially if it's not managed. The major
complications for seventy-five percent of all maternal deaths are severe bleeding, high
blood pressure, and complications from delivery.
If doctors did certain tests before the
child is born, they could have saved a life (Floyd, Jessica, pg. 20). In pregnancies,
doctors can do certain tests to make sure that there is nothing wrong with the mother of
the child like checking their urine for protein to detect preeclampsia, doing frequent
ultrasound checks, and listening to the fetus’s heart rate with a fetal doppler. These
tests can be expensive without having insurance but with insurance most of the costs
are covered or they should be.
In pregnancies, preeclampsia is one of the hypertension illnesses with
pregnancy. It affects three to five percent of pregnant women, and is a cause of
maternal mortality. Detection of the placenta changes in the first trimester by three-
dimensional power doppler ultrasound. It can be used to detect preeclampsia early, but
most doctors do not do this. The
Egyptian Journal of Medicine
did a test with a tool
called virtual organ computer that is an aided analysis imaging. The result was a
comparison of the placental volume of a health pregnancy group and preeclamptic
pregnancies that showed a considerable amount of distinction. The volume of the
placenta was higher in the healthy pregnancy medical group compared to the
preeclamptic pregnancy group. A comparison between normal pregnancy and
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pregnancies with preeclampsia complicated pregnancies have lesser blood vessels and
lower blood flow. (Wasfy, Mohamed, pg. 1637).
Ultrasounds should be done often in
pregnancy, pregnant women can get preeclampsia at any point in pregnancy, but
doctors only do a couple of ultrasounds only in the beginning, and that is if insurance
covers the costs. If they do not you will be billed for them depending on your insurance.
According to
“
Prevalence of Access to Prenatal Care
in the First Trimester of
Pregnancy Among Black Women Compared to Other Races”
black women had the
lowest prevalence of access to prenatal care in the first trimester ranging from 8.1
percent to 74.81 percent, while white women varied from 44.9 percent to 94.0 percent.
(Alcantara da Silva, pg. 6). Black women compared to other racial groups had lower
prevalence of access to prenatal services, with less chance of access in the first
trimester. As a result of racism, medical care and racial stereotyping in the medical field,
black women and their infants in the United States continue to face a higher risk of
pregnancy- related death.
Every race should be treated the same when it comes to
prenatal care in pregnancy. Doctors should take into consideration that all babies are
the same and deserve the same care no matter the race or ethnicity.
In conclusion, doctors should be doing more tests whether the mother of the child
is a different race, ethnicity or if they have insurance or not. Costs of doctors
appointments and certain tests such as checking urine, ultrasounds, or listening to the
fetus’s heart rate with a doppler should not be a factor in ensuring the health of the
mother and child.
It would save a bunch of time when the baby is delivered because
they already know what is happening or what could go wrong. It may even save lives.
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Doctors should know more about what is happening before it already happens by doing
certain tests early on due to the technology we have today. Doctors should be more
considerate of what could go wrong when a mother is delivering a child. Health trainers
should provide pregnant women with information and advice on getting the best medical
care they need.
Works CIted
Alcantra, Da Silvia. “Prevalence of Access to Prenatal Care in the FIrst Trimester of
Pregnancy Among Black Women Compared to Other Races”.
Public Health
Reviews,
4 July 2022, pp. 1-11,
Academic Search Complete,
www. frontiersin.org
Accessed 22 April 2023
Drewry, Jonathan, “The impact of the state children’s health insurance Programs Unborn Child
Ruling Expansions on Foreign- Born Latina Prenatal Care”.
Maternal and Child Health
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Journal,
Vol. 19, No. 7, July 2015, pp. 1464- 1471,
Academic Search Complete
,
Www. springer.com/us/. Accessed 22 April 2023
Floyd, Jessica Keating. “Making Pregnancy Safer”
. Commonweal,
Vol. 149, No. 9,
October 2022, pp. 18-21,
Academic Search Complete,
www.web-s-ebscohost-com.
Allstate.libproxy.ivytech.edu. Accessed 19 April 2023
Rodrigues, Camila Bruto. “Prenatal Care and Human Rights”
. World Health Organization,
Vol. 17, No. 1, February 14,2023, pp.1-19,
Academic search complete,
WWW. web-b-ebscohost-com.allstate.libproxy.ivytech.edu. Accessed 19 April 2023
Wasfy, Mohamed Ahmed. “Value of 3D Ultrasonographic assessment of Placental Volume”.
Egyptian Journal of Hospital Medicine,
Vol. 90, No. 1, Jan 2023, pp.1633-1639,
Academic Search Complete,
www. Web-s-ebscohost-com.allstate.libproxy.ivytech.edu.
Assessed 22 April 2023