Post-Partum Diseases to Watch Out for After Birth
If you’re a new or expectant mother, you can ensure your baby gets a good start in life by alerting your medical team to possible signs of post-delivery disease in them and yourself. After all, their well-being is not possible if you are not healthy. Taking a few moments to learn the signs of some common post-delivery health conditions will help you seek early treatment and spare your family serious complications.
Infections
Infections are perhaps the most common post-delivery condition. This makes sense when you realize that birth exhausts you and your infant’s physical resources. This includes your immune system. Giving birth also creates conditions that can make infections more likely to occur. A few examples are retained placenta or a C-section incision. If you are feeling hot or swelling areas of your body, be sure to get a doctor’s diagnosis before treatment.
Digestive Issues
Urinary tract and gastrointestinal infections may sound relatively minor but they may possibly lead to dehydration and electrolyte imbalances that can damage the brain, heart, and other organs. As is the case with any infection, you need to be alert for a high fever, pain, incessant or shrill crying, paleness, lethargy, difficulty breathing, refusal to breast or bottled feed, purple blotches on skin, skin rashes, diarrhea, vomiting, or any other change from typical behavior. Since most infections readily respond to at-home antibiotic therapy, you and your baby will be able to recover with a minimum of disruption to your daily routines.
Circulatory Issues
While you’re looking at you and your baby’s skin, you need to watch for any duskiness or a bluish tinge and report such changes to your doctor, as they can be signs of reduced circulation. You also need to carefully monitor your own veins. Spider veins, for example, can become more than unsightly annoyances. According to an Ivein Treatment center over time, the underlying vein issues that can be present with spider veins may impair circulation and form clots that can travel to the heart, lungs, and brain leading to the serious complications of heart attack, pulmonary embolism, or stroke, respectively. You should also watch for pelvic congestion syndrome which can develop after giving birth. Fortunately, most spider veins can be quickly treated by injecting them with an FDA approved sodium tetradecyl sulfate solution designed to fade or eliminate them.
Closely watching your baby and your own body for signs of post-partum disease will help you avoid long-term complications by ensuring you receive early treatment for any illnesses. Carefully attending to one another, and the good health such careful monitoring brings, will energize your focus toward beginning healthy and happy lives together.
Eileen O’Shanassy is a freelance writer and blogger based out of Flagstaff, AZ. She writes on a variety of topics and loves to research and write. She enjoys baking, biking, and kayaking. Check out her Twitter @eileenoshanassy.
