hello welcome back to our weekly Sunday sit down
q a where we answer your questions yeah this week we are talking about birth anxiety and also
developmental milestones and how to track them if your baby was born a little bit early if this is
your first time meeting us I'm Sarah I'm a board certified OB GYN I'm Kurt I'm a board-certified
pediatrician and we are the doctors bjorkman so let's get to it this week our first question
comes from Alex s she said we are so grateful for you guys any tips on coping with birth anxiety
for a first-time mom currently in counseling but wondering if you have any other tips to ease
a worried mind thanks so first congrats yes and it's awesome that you've already said hey I need
help I'm going to talk to someone about this yes so my first tip is always get professional help
see a therapist or a counselor um I feel like everybody should have a therapist and so normalize
getting and taking care of your mental health um so you're already doing that and that is
awesome some things that help me and seem to help other moms so you mentioned you know I'm a
first-time mom I have this anxiety there is this fear of the unknown if you aren't in medicine
you kind of have no idea what to expect and if you don't have other mom friends or people
kind of in the same season of life it may not be something you talk about what really happens
with birth what are the different options for birth you know what is labor what's pain like
what's recovery like and and that fear of the unknown or just not knowing is really hard to
wrap your mind around and so everyone's flavor of anxiety is a little different but many many
mamas find that getting a lot of information feeling empowered is really helpful so they know
what to expect and that takes some of the fear away and you can do that by a checking out all
of our videos we talk about a ton of first-time parent topics to try to get you through that and
kind of what we experienced um Talk openly with your girlfriends or other moms you know or parents
who have gone through birth and what it was like for them if you can read lots of different
books um one of the ones I really like is a book I edited by motherly the Guide to Becoming
Mama it's a great pregnancy and postpartum book for you um and really important is to really talk
with your OB or your Midwife or whoever that is um I find I feel more comfortable when I
really trust the person who's taking care of me um and then you just know you have someone on
your team who's going to be there to navigate you through that process and that is what your
OB or your Midwife is there for that's their job they want you to feel comfortable and they want
you to have a good birth experience so talk to them about these fears hey I'm a first-time mom
I have all this anxiety about birth how could you talk me through this maybe you can get a tour at
the hospital I know now kind of as we're moving through this season of covid things are opening
back up again maybe you can go in and see a room maybe then there's some birth class there at the
hospital so you can meet the nurses and understand hey do they have tubs here or balls or you know
what are the different things that are expected in during labor you can see the hospital you can
touch it you can feel it and it's a real thing you know how to get to labor and delivery so
just trying to make yourself familiar with what is going to happen really is empowering because
they're like oh I know sort of what to expect and then I always say expect the unexpected
labor you never know what you're going to get and so that goes right back to make sure you trust
that team taking care of you to guide you on this because we want you to have a good experience we
also want you to be safe and we want your baby to be safe and those are always kind of those three
goals safe Mom safe baby make sure we're having a good experience and everyone kind of knows
what's going on so I wish you the best you can do it you can do it um learn as much as you can
in the next few months and you'll be ready to go good luck okay next question this is coming from
Paige Schaefer and Paige says I have twins who are born six weeks early do I start introducing baby
foods based on their actual age or their adjusted age there are currently 12 weeks old awesome
well congratulations on your twin babies how are you doing hope you're getting some sleep
I'm sure you're very busy with them so when it comes to children born early in developmental
Milestones okay so the first thing to say is that there's some really nice information
that I can we can link in the description about developmental milestones and tracking them
for your child and kind of what to expect at each stage for children who are born kind of in that
term weight preterm stage so this is 37 38 weeks along generally you're following pretty much the
same developmental Milestones as if they were born right at 40 weeks we say if they're born more than
three weeks early or more than that then it's good to use a corrected gestational age so that's 36
anything before 37 yes exactly okay yep so say your baby was born six weeks early as you said so
then you would say hey when they're 12 weeks old you're actually going to look at milestones for
someone who is a six week old so instead of being 12 they if they were born on their due date they'd
only be six weeks old so that's their corrected gestational age and you correct to the due date
yes okay and then using that as a reference for developmental Milestones okay having said that I
think it's also really good to be aware of that the developmental Milestones are not set that
oh your baby must crawl on this date they must walk on this date they're going to eat salads on
this date those kind of things and so for instance thinking about it starting solids we're going to
say between four and six months most children are ready for that first kind of Taste and to start
working on some solid foods some children well within normal may not start solids until maybe
they're seven months of age now your children who were born six weeks early so then maybe that four
to six month window is actually going to be five and a half to seven months seven and a half months
of age and so the biggest thing with that and even if you go back to our starting solids video that
we did a couple months ago the biggest first steps is really just that your baby's showing interest
and that they can kind of do the other things like sitting upright have good head control and so
it's not so much about how old they are but the things that they've already been able to do yeah
one other plug if you are a parent of a baby who was born early it's always great to be checking in
with their pediatrician you can ask them hey how do you feel like they're doing are they catching
up where they add on that and then also early intervention programs to help make sure that
they're getting speech therapy Physical Therapy occupational therapy if that's something that
they're falling a little bit behind or if they haven't caught up on their Milestones generally
say following the corrected gestational age about two years of age is kind of when everyone kind
of meets that same thing so that was my question when when are they supposed to catch up so they
can get their driver's license when they're 16 years old they don't have to be 16 in six weeks so
generally by two years of age is when that catch up we say hey everything's probably normalized
and that little bit of effect from being born a month and a half early and it's negligible by then
nice awesome well hopefully that was some great educational content for you this week we are so
appreciative of your questions and look forward to answering a few more next week stay tuned for this
week's episode on Wednesday where we talk about a question that we get once in a while of is there
anything you can do to influence whether you have a boy or girl so we're gonna do a whole episode on
that one on Wednesday see you guys next week bye we're doctors but not your doctors
anything we've said in this video is for education or entertainment
purposes only it is not medical advice any specific medical questions you
have should be directed to your provider
