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I am pregnant.
Welcome to Hello Bump.
We're making pregnancy less overwhelming and more manageable, hopefully. I'm Grace, uy Ray, I'm pregnant for the first time and I just learned that a cavity could bring on labor.
That's a very interesting move. We'll go into it.
I am your heart of it when I'm a former Olympian, a mother of six of my own little ones, and I am now training to be an obstetrician.
Each week, Leanna and I will be holding your hand week by week through the mysterious, perplexing, and sometimes quite hilarious. Mary called that is pregnancy week seventeen.
How big are we today?
Were still on the fruit, Grace, I'm sorry, naval orange.
I see it is that different to another orange?
Like, I don't know, we can tell me. I'm not an expert in oranges, but it's a big orange.
I think. Yeah, I've got a serving of guacamoli.
I like it a bath bomb.
It was soft form. Yeah, we could go.
So twelve to fourteen centimetres is the little bubb it's about one hundred and thirteen grams to one hundred and forty two grams.
We're starting to get a bit of variation between.
Babies and what's happening to them.
Well, the baby's now finally starting to develop a little layer of fat so good. It's called add a post tissue. It's very important for babies temperature regulation when they're born. So obviously different babies will put on different levels of fat depending on what you're eating and your genetics. Their external little sex orleans are now fully developed to their LaBier and the glitteris and things like that are starting
and out where they're going to be. And there's tiny lines even developing on their fingers that will eventually form their unique fingerprints fingerprints.
That is not I just did not even hard to think of that.
Yes, at seventeen weeks. Wow, yep, it's quite cool. That is cool.
What what's happening to me and what's happening to my body?
Hopefully, increase energy and let's go at nighttime, though you might start to snore. We've talked about nasal congestion in the past, but it's really common that partners start kicking you on the back at this point because you're making a lot more noise, so you know it's largely again just because we've talked about before, the increased blood volume, So you've just got that congestion in your nose. But let's actually put it numbers in it. You have about
three to three or four liters of blood circulating. Now by the end of pregnancy, you'll have up to six liters of blood, so we're talking a lot of extra blood circulating.
I think I'm scared to ask this question, but when you go back to normal blood volume, are you losing that blood in labor or do you lose some?
Absolutely, we do lose some.
Up to five hundred meals is normal in a vaginal birth, and up to a leader in a cesarian section, which town's a larming. But when you've got an extra two you're probably okay. You're winging most of the rest of it out. So over the next couple of days, yeah, you actually your blood kind of recirculates it and then it goes and you end up you find what we call a diarhsis. So you get up and you do
a lot of wing. You also lose blood for a few weeks after birth, so I think we should normalize that that people do continue to lose so it's a reserve there as well.
You're wearing an appy, you just like your child direct for quite a year of course.
Yeah, okay, yeah, now to this week. You also may not need to peers much though. On that note, on the pnote, because that baby's now moving above that bladder, so hopefully getting a bit of a reprieve from having to get up all through the night despite the snoring.
Is this normal? Is normal?
So?
I want to ask about the dental link to pre term labor. This was a suggestion from my midwife that said sometime before you're twenty weeks to go and have a check up because a cavity or bad dental health could bring on preterm labor. What do you know about career?
Doesn't it?
It does look a couple of things. I think, particularly for someone like you who has had morning sickness and been vomiting and vomiting and vomiting, you can imagine how much acid it has been in your mouth, so you might be more prone to unfortunately getting a dental infection. You've also got a Dropp community. You've got an increased blood flow that we've talked about pretty much every twenty seconds, and so you're more prone to inflammation, is the bottom line.
So we know that whilst there's not an actual association between preterm labor and dental health, there has been some research. There's a bit, but it's kind of that research that someone that say yes definitely and others say no. It comes about that systemic inflammation from periodontal disease can trigger the pre term labor.
So it's whether the.
Inflammatory response, which we know if same thing, urine retract infections, for gial infections, all of those kind of things can put you in a pre a pro inflammatory state which can sometimes unfortunately trigger labor early. It's a protection, sadly, a mechanism for you and not as often for your baby because ultimately your body's like I need to survive. So if it gets really really sick, it can't sustain
a pregnancy. The pregnancy makes you worse, and so up until about twenty weeks this it's very more good and I'm sorry guys, but for example, if you had a car accident, we save mummy because baby is not viable yet so if you got really, really, really sick, your body's going to do the same thing. It's going to protect the mother over the baby. So you know, I guess that could be one of the anecdotal reasons as to why it happens, but the bottom line has got
identist and to get it checked. It's totally safe in pregnancy to have dental work. It's important if you have had it to let your midwife know after because interestingly, dental work itself can cause problems with infection because you can obviously you're making a whole or something. When they're digging through it, sometimes it can release bacteria into the system.
So it's also important if you do get sick in a couple of weeks afterwards, or problems with your heart, particularly that you let them know that you've had dental work recently.
Can they still take X rays of your mouth when you're pregnant.
I actually don't know that. Two ounce that's fine.
Yeah, I assume they would because they can obviously put a coat over and protect the baby. But I mean, ideally, again, have you your teeth checked beforehand, because we don't really want X rays. Don't get me wrong, we use it for example, we touched on the last episode dvt SO, which is a blood clot in the legs that can travel to the lungs, and we sometimes have to do imaging that has radiation in that because again the maternal risk, the mother risk of having a blood clot in the
lungs is more important than the baby. Not saying your baby's not important, It's very important, but it is more important to know if she's really sick or not. So I guess it depends. If you come in with a rip roaring tooth infection, they're very likely to do an X ray and the risk of that is pretty low. It's pretty much the same as going on a long pol flight.
And what are some things that we can do xtal check?
Yeah, sorry, start think about a holiday sooner, baby moon, so on the travel.
I think it's nice to sort of book it in.
I wouldn't be looking it in at thirty six weeks, guys, because not all pregnancy is weake it that far. So you know, around the twenty eight week mark is actually.
You might not want to move, or you might don't want to move. This is a good point or too much? Yeah, A dry a drive two hours is just say no.
Exactly so, and it's time by then to be close to the hospital.
Would be nice to do something really nice with you know, with your partner or your or your friend, whoever it's going to do, and maybe start looking at some yoga classes or some pregnancy specific classes. You're looking good, nice, pregnant. Now the bump is not, you know how sometimes you're like, oh, is she pregnant?
Is she not pregnant?
By about now it.
Starts to look a little more like, yes, it's confidently you're pregnancy in there.
You know, you might wear some mountfits that are bumping it like that pregnant do you know?
You might not not know the answer to this.
But some good baby moon places, like is there anything that people you've seen go?
Yeah, that Powerful Island's a big one, really is in Australia. But you get to go long haul New Zealand's and other good ones, and he's three hours flight. It's nice to sort of get away somewhere that's a bit quieter and go some nice walks, particularly if it's earlier in pregnancy. It depends what you like. I'm a hiker, but then I want to come home and have a massage. So it depends what you're sort of ntchies. I wouldn't go somewhere where street food's your only option. I think you'd
be Let's be really honest. I love beautiful places like Fiji and Barley, the wonderful places to travel. Most of their healthcare is pretty good. Even places like the Philippines have amazing health care. But just make sure you know where it is so that if you do travel on something untoward happens, you have access to adequate healthcare.
The toolkit this week is dentist related. I went in and I said to them and then a very lovely dentist and said, look, I'm very sensitive to tastes and smells and everything. And I said, am I allowed to request no fluid treatment because I think I'll vomit?
And they said absolutely.
And then when they were doing the cavity tests, everything was fine. They've done the check and they'd done the clean. They were doing like the extra polish, and I dry reached like five times and they just went, you know what, we can stop. We don't have to finish it. We've done most about work. It was just a bonus, just
come back in six months or whatever. So I think my talk kit is if you're going into any other appointments, you're allowed to request things you don't want or do want, and they were very responsive to that.
Yeah, and look, actually think that's a nice time based off what you just said to bring that exact thing up. In pregnancy, you can say no to anything. Ultimately, it's your body. But I think now around the sort of seventeen eight eight week mark is about the time to start sitting down and thinking what actually do you not
want and want? Because there are going to be a lot of things that your medical team and we are going to talk about them, are going to ask you or recommend, let's say you do over the next twenty weeks of pregnancy. Most of them you'll be like, yeah, sure, sounds good. Others may might not sit with you morally. So I think it'd be a good thing to know where you sit with it, do your own research, and come really well prepared with those questions to your legal team.
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This episode was produced by Courtney Ammenhauser with audio production by Tom Lyon.
We'll catch you next time. Bye.
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