a) Bathing the baby

b) Nutritious diet for the mother

c) Postnatal Exercise
d) Rest, sleep and activity
e) Pregnancy spacing
f) Health check up for mother and baby
g) Prevention of infection in the baby
h) Birth registration

1. Preconceptional Counseling and Care

When couple is seen and counseled about pregnancy. Its course and outcome well before the time of
actual conception is called preconception counseling. It is a very new concept. Objective is to ensure
that a woman enters pregnancy with an optimal state of health which would be safe both to herself
and the fetus. Organogenesis is completed by the 1 st trimester. By the time the woman is seen first in
the antenatal clinic it is often too late to advice because all the adverse factors have already begun to
exert their effect.

In an ideal world antenatal care world commence at the preconception stage where health education
(general advice about nutrition, lifestyle, avoidance of teratogens, folic acid supplementation, etc) and
risk assessment can be focused toward a planned pregnancy. Preconception counseling is of much
greater importance in two main groups of women