I think the way you could improve preconception counselling is by asking that question more often, \u201cDo you want to get pregnant?\u201d And the other area where we could greatly improve preconception counselling is for adolescents with chronic diseases. So for example, the diabetes clinic has a number of adolescents that are in the process of becoming sexually active and just taking the time with them to help them understand what the challenges are of a diabetic pregnancy and what kind of work they\u2019ll have to do. And giving them that information ahead of time before they get into something where they realize they didn\u2019t quite want to get all that involved. So any clinic that cares for teenagers, you always have to ask that question, \u201cDo you want to be pregnant? Do you want to avoid a pregnancy?\u201d And for kids with chronic illnesses, don\u2019t wait until they come and tell you they are sexually active and they\u2019ve missed a period. Talk to them before that happens because some of the chronic illnesses that kids carry into adulthood pose really serious risks for pregnancy and they need to value that and time it and do it when they can do the best job at it. Those are opportunities we can take and you have to be comfortable doing preconception counselling. There\u2019s part of you that wants to say, \u201cNo, don\u2019t get pregnant\u201d and you can\u2019t do that. If they, you know; seize the chance, do it, give them the information and they\u2019ll choose to use it if they want to. So it doesn\u2019t work to say, \u201cNo, don\u2019t get pregnant, it\u2019s a bad idea.\u201d Just find out if they\u2019re at risk and tell them what they need to do to have a healthy pregnancy and a healthy baby before it happens. And they might think, \u201cOh, that\u2019s too much work. I think I\u2019ll wait.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I think the way you could improve preconception counselling is by asking that question more often, \u201cDo you want to get pregnant?\u201d And the other area where we could greatly improve preconception counselling is for adolescents with chronic diseases. So for example, the diabetes clinic has a number of adolescents that are in the process […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-5411","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5411"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5411\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5412,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/5411\/revisions\/5412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}