Pregnancy and Birth: From Finding Out to Leaving the Hospital With the Paperwork

Taking one folic acid pill a day around the time you get pregnant lowers the probability of the child having a neural tube defect by about 70%. Neural tube defects are birth defects such as anencephaly and spina bifida. For someone who has already had one such child, the probability that the next child also has the problem drops to about one third of what it was.

At least five prenatal checkups during pregnancy, plus a postnatal home visit and the 42-day postnatal checkup, are paid for by the state. The way to claim them is to go to your community health center before week 13 of pregnancy and set up a Maternal and Child Health Handbook (《母子健康手册》). If you don't set one up, you simply miss out on these free visits.

At your first prenatal checkup, get these three done: HIV/AIDS, syphilis and hepatitis B; you don't pay for the tests yourself. Even if something really is found, it is not a dead end. The state provides drugs and a treatment plan for free to block the route by which the disease passes from mother to child; this is called blocking mother-to-child transmission.

Smoking during pregnancy pushes up the probability of the baby being born early, being born too small, and having a cleft lip or palate. The risk of abnormal bleeding during pregnancy and birth doubles outright. The risk of sudden infant death is also higher. Family members smoking indoors counts just the same. It is never too late to quit.

Pre-eclampsia is a high blood pressure condition of pregnancy. You count as high-risk if you had it in a previous pregnancy, are carrying more than one baby, have chronic high blood pressure, had diabetes before pregnancy, or have kidney disease or an autoimmune disease. For high-risk people, one low-dose aspirin a day from week 12 of pregnancy makes pre-eclampsia about 15% less likely, and makes both preterm birth and the baby's death around the time of birth about 20% less likely. Everyone else should not take it on their own.

Gestational diabetes is high blood sugar that appears only after you become pregnant. After week 24 of pregnancy, spending half a morning drinking sugar water once and having blood drawn a few times is enough to find it. If you neither test for it nor manage it, the risks of an overly large baby, a difficult labor, ending up with a cesarean, pre-eclampsia and low blood sugar in the newborn all go up.

If any one of these appears, go to the hospital that same day; don't wait at home overnight. A headache that won't go away or keeps getting worse, changes in your vision, a fever reaching 38 ℃. Severe swelling of the hands or face, being unable to catch your breath, chest pain or a fast heartbeat. Severe belly pain that doesn't ease, the baby's movements stopping or clearly decreasing, vaginal bleeding or leaking fluid. One arm or leg that is swollen and painful, wanting to harm yourself or your baby. Within one year after birth also counts.

When your water breaks, it is not the time to pack things slowly and then set off. The right thing to do is to lie down where you are, raise your bottom, and call 120. If you stand and walk around, the amniotic fluid flows out faster, and the umbilical cord may be washed down with it. That is an emergency that can kill the baby.

A labor epidural (无痛分娩) means an injection of anesthetic in your lower back that suppresses the pain of giving birth. It works better than other ways of relieving pain, and it won't make you more likely to end up with a cesarean. “An epidural gives you back pain for life” has no basis either. It now has its own separate billing item, and hospitals are more willing to provide it.

The World Health Organization's position is that once a place's cesarean rate goes above 10%, deaths of mothers and newborns stop falling any further. When a cesarean is needed, it must be done. Having one to pick a date or out of fear of pain just means undergoing a major abdominal operation for nothing.

If your employer has paid maternity insurance, the medical costs of giving birth and the allowance paid during maternity leave both come out of this fund. If the spouse has no job, the medical-cost part can be reimbursed too. Whether you have enough months of contributions, and whether you need to register in advance to give birth somewhere else, must be asked about beforehand; they can't be fixed afterward.

This certificate is a prerequisite for registering the baby's household registration (hukou), enrolling in insurance and starting school, and only the institution that delivered the baby can issue it the first time. If you go back for it after leaving the hospital, you have to go through a separate process and submit more documents. For the characters in the name, first confirm that the household registration system can type them.

One heel-prick blood test and one hearing test can detect hypothyroidism, phenylketonuria and hearing impairment while the child still looks completely normal. By the time symptoms show, the damage to intelligence can no longer be made up.

With the birth certificate you can enroll the baby online, without waiting for the hukou registration. Once the baby is enrolled, the hospital bill can be reimbursed on the spot at discharge. Newborn hospital bills are not small, and there is a big difference between being enrolled and not.

The law gives one month, not “whenever you get around to it.” Hukou registration holds up what comes after it: vaccinations, kindergarten, school and getting an ID card. The longer you put it off, the more documents you have to supply.

This checkup costs nothing, includes a complete blood count and a vaginal discharge test, and also includes one postpartum depression screening. Serious problems can occur at any point within one year after birth; don't think you are safe once the confinement month is over.

Toxoplasma is a parasite. Being infected for the first time during pregnancy may cause miscarriage, and the child's eyes and brain may also be damaged. Keeping a cat at home does not make people more likely to be infected, so the cat does not need to go. What you need to guard against more is eating undercooked meat and touching soil without washing your hands; just have someone else scoop the litter every day.