Information regarding our Pregnant patients

PREGNANCY RELATED VISITS

As mentioned in the previous section, we will continue to see our pregnant patients at regularly scheduled intervals, all the while taking the necessary precautionary measures to minimize opportunities for exposure to the virus.

how covid can affect pregnant women

Due to physiologic changes that occur in pregnancy, when compared with their non-pregnant counterparts, pregnant women with lower respiratory tract infections are often hit harder. This means that their burden of symptoms is greater, and could potentially include a higher rate of hospital and intensive care unit admission. 

WHat we know from previous experiences with pandemics

We have lived through SARS and MERS, and we can make some general predictions about pregnant patients, but this is a new virus which might throw a twist at us.

In general, outcomes from pregnant women who had SARS or MERS had good outcomes. Pregnancies carried to term, or babies that needed to be delivered early had good outcomes. However, early on in pregnancy, there were an increased rate of miscarriages.

There is no transmission from the mother to the baby by way of blood, amniotic fluid, the placenta or breast milk.

How we are caring for our pregnant patients

• Care before delivery

  • Wear a mask as soon as you arrive at a medical office, a lab, an allied health care facility (i.e. chiropractor or physiotherapist office), or the hospital.

  • Pregnant patients will be taken directly to a room in the office without having to wait in the waiting room

  • Being pregnant doesn’t alter the way a test is done, or the results from the test, if a Covid-19 test is done. That being said, the number of testing kits is limited which means that we will not be testing every patient who has symptoms. Only high risk patients.

  • We will manage as many patients from home as possible. If for some reason, a pregnant patient requires a hospital visit and admission, then special precautions for isolation in the hospital and contact infection precautions will be done.

  • If a pregnant patient has been diagnosed with Covid-19, then we will consider delaying routine visits, or doing visits by OTN video, while the patient self quarantines.

  • If a pregnant patient gets superimposed pneumonia along with Covid-19, then we will treat with antibiotics while monitoring the patient and the baby closely

  • In patients with a confirmed case of Covid-19, we will do monthly ultrasounds to assess that the baby is growing appropriately

• Postpartum and Newborn care

  • It is not recommend universal isolation of the infant from either confirmed of suspected infection in the mother.

    • However, depending on a family’s values and availability of resources they may choose to separate infant from mother until isolation precautions for the mother is over

  • Before touching or taking care of the newborn, patients should practice good handwashing before touching the baby (using the 20 second rule), and use of a mask to prevent droplet spread.

  • Women who choose to breastfeed should be allowed to do so after appropriate handwashing and while wearing a mask.

    • It is theoretically possible that the mother can transmit antibodies to the infant through breastmilk, however from our experience with SARS and MERS, this was not the case.