Pre-Conception

You’ve decided you’re ready to start a family. As natural as it is, the idea of growing a tiny human is daunting, if not scary. So many questions - what do you need to know? How can you ensure your baby will be healthy? What if you can’t get pregnant? What if you can? Can you even do this?

At Serenity Birth Center, your questions are answered by a nurse-midwife well-qualified staff. The Serenity team will carefully guide you through the emotional journey of pre-conception and help you prepare a healthy home for your future growing baby.

Preparing For Pregnancy

Serenity offers nutritional and lifestyle guidance to prepare for pregnancy as well as infertility services with kindness and compassion. You can trust them to create a plan customized to your body type and needs. Following their plan takes the anxiety out of the process. You won’t worry about what to eat, what to do, or if you’re doing it right. Just follow the steps given and you’ll be on your way to a healthier you.

Advice and Help in Achieving Lifestyle Changes

Learn how a healthy body before pregnancy results in a better outcome for both mom and baby. Set up an appointment to discuss your current emotional health, your stress, your sleep habits, and sleep schedule, and overall physical health.

Our staff will identify unhealthy habits and create a plan to help you eat, sleep, and work better to eliminate stress and prepare you for pregnancy.

Weight and Nutrition

When you choose Serenity Birth Center, you’ll get a healthy diet and exercise plan created just for you. You’re not alone. You have an entire staff of professionals supporting you in this journey, guiding you as you make changes, encouraging you when it’s hard.

Health Screening

Health screening is an important step in pre-conception. There are many health factors that, left unchecked, can impede the healthy development of your future baby. Many of those factors have no warning signs so it’s important to check on those things before you become pregnant. Serenity Birth Center offers screening for:

Blood Testing - A full array of blood testing, cultures, and other testing tells a lot about your current health and ability to conceive and birth a healthy baby.
Rubella (German measles) Immunity - Rubella may lead to infant blindness, deafness, and mental challenges. Serenity Birth Center advises women who are susceptible to Rubella to vaccinate before pregnancy.
Cervical Cancer - A simple PAP smear is recommended if your last PAP test is out of date.
Blood Pressure - High blood pressure before pregnancy can lead to a variety of developmental issues for babies in the womb. It’s important to know if you tend toward high blood pressure before conception so your caregiver can create a plan to help you manage it during pregnancy.
Anemia - Anemia, or low red blood cell count, sometimes causes exhaustion. Anemia is fairly common for women of childbearing age and it’s easily treated with iron supplements. Pregnancy is exhausting enough even if you aren’t anemic. Starting pregnancy with a healthy red blood cell count helps alleviate some of that exhaustion.
Diabetes - A simple test to detect the absence of sugar in the urine is all that’s needed to rule out diabetes. Diabetic women can successfully conceive and birth healthy babies as long as they know about their condition before conception and follow the treatment plan given by their caregivers.
Kidney Disease - A simple test to detect the absence of protein in the urine is given to rule out kidney disease.
Genital Infection/Disease - The presence of genital infection or disease doesn’t necessarily rule out pregnancy. It’s important to know about it and begin treatment before conception.
Dental Health - It may sound strange to include your teeth in the pre-conception screening process, but infections and diseases can sometimes start with unhealthy teeth or gums. Some dental treatments may be harmful to a growing baby so it’s important to start pregnancy with healthy teeth and gums.
Folic Acid - If you are contemplating pregnancy, we advise you to take folic acid (one 400 mcg tablet a day) to decrease the risk of neural tube defects, such as spina bifida. If you don’t choose to take folic acid tablets, you need to make sure to eat foods rich in folic acids such as spinach, green beans, and oranges.

Basic Fertility Testing

Wanting a baby, but not being able to conceive is truly heartbreaking. Serenity Birth Center understands the pain and frustration that goes with infertility and we want to compassionately partner with you to discover the cause and plan treatment.

We discuss with you your medical, surgical, gynecological, and obstetric history, as well as your lifestyle to try to get clues about the cause of your infertility. A review of records from other health care providers (family doctor, OB/GYN, fertility doctor) that you have seen is also important in helping us treat your infertility.