Pregnancy Support

Mookai Rosie Bi-Bayan has three generations of experience caring for pregnant women and their children, throughout the Far North Queensland region, with particular emphasis on their accommodation and care while attending Cairns for ante-natal care and medical treatments.

Our doctor, nurses, Health Workers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Practitioners mean Mookai Rosie provides not just a friendly, comfortable place to stay but also provide medical staff who can provide top quality health care and advice on how to keep you and your bub healthy.

Planning Your Pregnancy

Looking after yourself is the best way to make sure you have a healthy bub; eating healthy, keeping up your fitness, taking folate, quitting smoking and alcohol are all good for you and your baby. It is also very important that your vaccinations are up to date as there are some that can’t be given once you have fallen pregnant.

Watching what you eat

If you are planning to have a baby or are pregnant, you should look at your diet and try to make healthier food choices. Eating healthier foods will help with your chances of getting pregnant and having a healthy pregnancy. Fresh green vegetables, beans and eggs are all good sources of a thing called folate, a vitamin B that is essential to the healthy brain development of your baby.

Alcohol

There is no safe amount of alcohol to drink during pregnancy; therefore, for women who are pregnant or planning a pregnancy, not drinking is the safest option. Alcohol can affect the health and development of an unborn baby for life.

Smoking

Quitting smoking before pregnancy is the best way to protect your baby and yourself from any bad things happening during pregnancy. By quitting smoking you are more likely to conceive naturally and without delay, less likely to suffer a miscarriage or other serious problems and less likely to have a premature birth.

Diabetes

If you have diabetes during pregnancy, there is an increased risk of health problems in the developing baby and the chances of an early miscarriage. The risk is higher when sugar levels before and during early pregnancy have not been within the safe range.

Diabetes also increases risk of other problems during pregnancy, such as high blood pressure, as well as having a large baby. Planning and preparing for pregnancy, and well managed diabetes during pregnancy, has been shown to reduce the risk of health problems and improve pregnancy outcomes for women with diabetes.

Gestational Diabetes

If you develop diabetes during pregnancy, it is called gestational diabetes. It is diagnosed when higher than normal blood glucose levels first appear during pregnancy.

Most women will no longer have diabetes after the baby is born. However, some women will continue to have high blood sugar levels after bub arrives.

Gestational diabetes is the fastest growing type of diabetes in Australia, affecting thousands of pregnant women. Between 12% and 14% of pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes and this usually occurs around the 24th to 28th week of pregnancy.

Women who have risk factors for gestational diabetes should be tested early in their pregnancy.