Under 17 And Pregnant? Your Baby Will Have More Health Problems

No kidding?!

I think we all knew that being a teenage mum was a problem. Both the mum and baby are likely to be underweight (and all the problems that come with that).

But what can we do about it?

Researchers looked at 50,000 women between 14 and 29 to see how their pregnancies fared. Seven percent of these were between 14 and 17-years-old.

I’m not at all surprised to see that those 14 to 17 did the worst in terms of being underweight themselves, giving birth prematurely, having underweight babies, and having to deal with all the problems that brings with it.

They say that most of these problems are related to living in socially deprived areas and having poor prenatal care.

First of all, many young women might not know how to recognise that they’ve taken a risk or what the signs of being pregnant are. And if they do realise this, there is often so much social stigma that they are afraid to get a pregnancy test or go to a clinic.

If we want them to be able to access good health care we need to help them by not ostracising them and encouraging them to go to the clinics and buy the tests and talk about their health.

Yes, women have been giving birth since the beginning of time. But often young people, especially if they are socially disadvantaged, might not know how to take care of themselves. Also, because they are more likely to have health problems than older mothers, they need to be monitored to help manage these problems with the help of a doctor.

The best thing would be to fix the social problems that might lead these young women to getting pregnant in the first place. So until we can fix the greater societal problems, sex education in schools and prenatal services are the best we can do to help these women and their children.