PROBLEMS IN PRENATAL DEVELOPMENT

Good Morning! 3/12/14  Today’s Agenda:  Problems during prenatal development  Review Prenatal development  Turn in entry about pregnancy  Friday:  Quiz on prenatal development

Losing a baby  Sometimes a baby doesn’t develop normally, sometimes causing the baby to die  If the baby dies before 20 weeks, it’s a miscarriage  After 20 weeks, it’s called a stillbirth

Grief  Loss of baby can be very painful  Couples who lose an unborn baby, grieve just as they would for a child who had been born  They go through the same stages of grief  Most are able to successfully have children later

Birth Defects  Born with serious problems that threaten their health or ability to live  There are hundreds of different ones  Vary widely – some are mild and can be corrected easily  Some are severe, lifelong disabilities  Some cause death  3 out of every 100 children in the US are born with a birth defect  Not always apparent at birth – show up months or years later

What are they?  Some could affect the shape or size of the body or certain parts of the body  Child could be born with a misshapen foot, a missing finger, or an extra finger  Some could effect their body functions  Blindness, deafness, mental retardedness

What causes them?  60% of the time, we don’t know what caused it  Constant research is done to decrease the number  4 main causes:  Environmental  Hereditary  Errors in Chromosomes  Interaction of Heredity and Environment

Environmental causes  Baby develops all the bodily systems during the first few weeks of pregnancy  Depends completely on the mother for nourishment  Choices the Mom makes can effect the baby  Nutritional diet of mother  Diseases or infections the mother has  Harmful substances  Some medicines  Exposure to hazards (radiation)

Hereditary  Genetic blueprint has thousands of genes  Each person has 5 or 6 recessive genes that are imperfect but have no effect on development  But, if each parent passes on the same imperfect gene or it’s a dominant gene, it may cause a birth defect  Some only effect one gender – hemophilia and color blindness only affect males

Errors in Chromosomes  Could be too many or too few chromosomes in each of the baby’s cells  Most common of this type is down’s syndrome  1 in every 800 births has this condition  Risk increases when mother is 35 or older  Has an extra chromosome 21 Hundreds of genes in chromosomes, so it can interfere with development in many ways

Interaction of Heredity and Environment  A baby may inherit the tendency for a heart defect, but it only shows up if other factors affect the baby during pregnancy  Drugs and alcohol  Certain viruses  These cases, if only one thing happened (heredity OR environment) the heart would likely be normal

Prevention and Diagnosis  Some can be prevented  Healthy diet choices  Taking vitamins – particularly Folic Acid Right amount could prevent 1000 cases of spina bifida per year  No harmful substances

Genetic Counseling  Parents already have a child with a birth defect  High risk group – over 35, have hereditary risks  Over 100 birth defects can be diagnosed before birth-possibly treated and prevented  Different tests

Prenatal diagnosis  Ultrasound – sound waves to make a video image of an unborn baby. Can show certain defects with skeleton or organs.  Amniocentesis – withdraw a sample of the amniotic fluid and testing for indications of certain problems  Contains some cells from the fetus  Determine Downs syndrome  Chorionic villi sampling – small amounts of tissue from the membrane around fetus.  Can be done earlier than amniocentesis

Complete:  Birth defects affect…