Women entering pregnancy can now benefit from an expanded, multifaceted group approach to prenatal care offered at Bon Secours St. Francis Medical Center.

CenteringPregnancy® is a nationally recognized program led by certified providers usually nurse midwives; it augments individual prenatal visits with group sessions and gives expectant women better control of their pre-natal care, through a group setting.

“Expectant women are more empowered today than 10 or 20 years ago in making their own health care decisions, and CenteringPregnancy helps them achieve this by bringing women out of isolated exam rooms and into groups for their care,” said Mary Anne Graf, vice president of women’s services, Bon Secours Virginia Health System. “CenteringPregnancy has a proven track record of ensuring healthier babies and healthier, well-informed new mothers. While moms often desire to be in the driver’s seat of their pregnancy, labor and delivery by making their own choices, they also can find pregnancy to be isolating and intimidating at times. CenteringPregnancy provides a supportive setting of women who often share the same ‘pains and passions’ of pregnancy.”

After completing their first obstetrics appointment at a Bon Secours-affiliated practice or clinic, women receive information on CenteringPregnancy and are offered the choice to participate in the program. Women are grouped by similar due dates. In each weekly session, they receive a private, prenatal check up by a certified nurse-midwife, including weight and blood pressure monitoring. This is followed by a two-hour group educational session led by a certified nurse-midwife. The weekly sessions enable the women to discuss health concerns and expectations in a supportive setting. Weekly topics including nutrition and healthy lifestyles, labor and childbirth options, breastfeeding, pregnancy discomforts, newborn care, child development and more.

Through this unique model of care, women become empowered and feel confident to play a more active role in their pregnancy and overall health. They have access to all their charts, ultrasounds and lab work, and they are acutely aware of how their pregnancy is progressing. Each woman is supported physically, spiritually, psychologically and socially, through bonds that develop within the group.

Initiated in the early 1990s by a nurse-midwife in Connecticut, and today with sites nationwide, the CenteringPregnancy model has resulted in positive health outcomes for pregnancies, specifically increased birth weight, fewer preterm births, shorter postpartum hospitalizations, and fewer unnecessary visits to the emergency room. The satisfaction expressed by both the women and their providers support the effectiveness of this model for the delivery of care.

“Women often are each other’s best teachers, and groups enable them to share a wealth of information with one another,” said Jean Curtacci, RN, a certified nurse-midwife and a group leader of CenteringPregnancy at St. Francis Medical Center. “The women in my groups are more willing to express what they’re really feeling, and they feed off of each other. The experience also is enhancing the way I provide prenatal care in a traditional setting, because I am learning more about what these women are going through in any given week of their pregnancy.”

“CenteringPregnancy has proven to be a really powerful process for a woman’s pregnancy, and it’s changing the way women are receiving their prenatal care,” said Graf. “New mothers especially are seeing this group approach as what prenatal care is, and will be in the future. The support setting will enrich their prenatal health, and the bonds they form will play an important role in each other’s lives. We see this as a new paradigm in the way prenatal care is delivered in the future.”

CenteringPregnancy comes to Bon Secours as a result of its 12-month qualitative and quantitative research, revealing how women today are more empowered than the previous generation of women to seek options and resources to pursue their own health needs. To support this, Bon Secours also is introducing other new programs this year, including Moms in Motion®, a nationally recognized fitness program.

Bon Secours is an advertiser with Richmondmom.com

I wanted to share some of the unique features with you!

Top-notch medical care 

– They are the only Level III NICU with private rooms, should a baby need additional, specialized care.

Group prenatal care: Centering Pregnancy

This summer I flew to New Zealand to visit my best friend and her new baby.  Having a two-year old myself, I thought that the greatest gift I could give was the comfort of an old friend to help with the cooking, cleaning, diapering, and simply talking about motherhood.  I personally experienced a difficult time during the postpartum period and wanted to be there for my friend as much as possible. 

As soon as she picked me up at the airport, I realized she was adjusting to motherhood just fine!  While we chatted and caught up, I realized the differences between her postpartum experiences and my own were more than two women handling the introduction to motherhood differently.  It reflected a cultural difference. 

In New Zealand women learn about pregnancy, childbirth, childcare, and postpartum rehabilitation.   A midwife visits the new mother and child at their home regularly, often multiple times every week, for the first six weeks after birth, checking on the baby’s progress as well as the new mother’s physical and mental well being. The new mothers are screened for postpartum depression and the level of support given by family and friends is evaluated. 

Further, the new mothers are physically monitored and are referred to a women’s health physical therapist on a regular basis.  The physical therapist specializing in women’s health and postpartum rehabilitation checks for musculoskeletal concerns, which include diastasis (abdominal separation), posture, and pelvic floor strength and suggests appropriate exercises.  These interventions often result in reduced incontinence, back pain and diastasis, and provide a faster return to normal posture and body mechanics, including sexual intercourse. New Zealand’s culture embraces the notion of supporting and nurturing the mother’s mental and physical well-being as well as the infant’s.   

In the United States, pregnancy and childbirth overshadow the postpartum needs of the mother.  Women learn about childbirth and childcare, but ignore the importance of postpartum rehabilitation.  Instead, the nurse gives the mother a quick bit of postpartum instruction at check out, often buried in a packet of other information. The mother’s six-week check-up does not usually address the musculoskeletal components so carefully checked in other cultures. 

There are no medical postpartum supervised exercises offered, and prevention, or at least alleviation, of incontinence, back pain, diastasis and poor abdominal function is rarely discussed.  Additionally, there is rarely any advice given regarding normal posture and body mechanics.  Often new mothers return to normal activities too soon, despite a nagging feeling (call it women’s intuition) that their bodies just are not right.  Our bodies are not the same after childbirth, yet we are not being taught how to regain our lost musculoskeletal function. 

In fact, the United States is significantly behind many developed countries in its care for women and postpartum rehabilitation. Canada, Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands all have postpartum programs developed to improve the musculoskeletal health of women during their child bearing years.  

Thankfully, with education we can change our culture to value the mother’s health as much as the health of her baby.  There is a small but growing group of healthcare providers who understand this and embrace the importance of postpartum rehabilitation.  Women’s Health Physical Therapists have unique musculoskeletal knowledge.  Working with them and your physician on postpartum education and assessments can improve your physical health, and your joy of life.

In Richmond, Women’s Health Physical Therapy offers a musculoskeletal check of your abdominal muscles, pelvic floor, posture, and the biomechanics you use in taking care of your baby.  Most insurance companies will cover postpartum care under the category of disuse muscle atrophy.

If you are expecting, I encourage you to continue to read up on the issues discussed above. If you are lucky enough to have already joined the ranks of new mothers, I urge you to request postpartum physical therapy.  Learn about musculoskeletal postpartum rehabilitation, and share what you learn.  Together we can change our culture, one mother at a time.    

–This article written by Jane Ireland Broadbent and was sponsored by Women’s Health Physical Therapy. www.obgyn-physicaltherapy.com    For more information about their services including treatment prenatal and postpartum services, incontinence, pelvic pain, orthopedic, breast cancer, osteoperosis, constipation, fetal incontinence, fibromyalgia, balance, lymphedema, pelvic pain, and headaches.  804-379-3002