 A young couple for the first time seeing her positive pregnancy test is a time of great joy and excitement. How many of our young girls and young couples actually plan for a pregnancy? What we hear is usually couples trying for a pregnancy. Trying for a pregnancy would be someone just going for an exam and writing it. Planning for a pregnancy would mean reading up about the syllabus, studying hard and going for the exam. Both candidates probably will pass an exam but the one who plans for the exam usually comes out better. Similarly in pregnancy we would like couples not to just try, we would like them to actually plan. So I'll tell you now in the next couple of minutes how to plan for a pregnancy. The best way to plan for a pregnancy is to look at it twofold. One is your fitness. Your fitness to take nine months of pregnancy and the delivery which comes later and even the postnatal period. So when it comes to fitness we're looking at two aspects. One is what is your strength? What is your endurance? So we would like you before you get pregnant to improve your endurance, to improve your physical strength so that you can take the rigors of your pregnancy and delivery as well. So how do you do that? Well we would like you to look at maybe looking at endurance training that would be like running, jogging, cycling, swimming. You could also look at improving your muscle training by doing resistance training that will improve your core strength, your muscle strength, your bone strength and these all will come to a great help for you when you're actually pregnant. The other aspect of fitness would be your diet. We find that especially in our coastal belts you'll find that our diet is very much lopsided carbohydrate rich. We would prefer that you cut down your carbohydrates. Carbohydrates would be like the rice based foods, the sugar based foods, the fruit based foods. Now these have a very high level of carbohydrate which are basically very high energy levels. We would prefer that you to look at maybe green leafy vegetables or all the vegetables that grow above the ground as well as protein foods which would come from lentils as well as from non vegetarian foods. So if you concentrate on correct food habits, if you look at good exercise, good sunlight, you'll become that much more fitter. About 3 months before you actually try to get pregnant, it would be a good idea for you to come along and meet one of us gynecologists. During this time we'll be looking at how fit are you to get pregnant. Are there any reasons why we should postpone our getting pregnant? So we do it in 2 ways. One is we'll actually do some investigations. In the investigations we'll be doing your hemoglobin test, your sugar test, your thyroid test, maybe urine test. We'll also check your blood group. We'll also probably check on your partner as well, your husband to make sure that everything is fine. If we find there's something wrong, then we can actually correct it. So if you have a thyroid issue which we find before you get pregnant, there's a simple matter of correcting that problem well in advance of your pregnancy and then you can get pregnant on an even footing that is in a good way. If you were to get pregnant and then get a blood test done, by the time you can get your control of your sugars we'll find that your pregnancy has already gone for 3 months and our baby has been essentially living in an unhealthy scenario. So come to us, we'll do your blood test and we'll make sure that you're fit. The other part of your pre-pregnancy check would be to look at your history and find out whether you've had any surgeries before, whether you have any medical illnesses before and that we get by eliciting a good history from you. Another great improvement in your pregnancy health will come by just starting a tablet known as folic acid. A folic acid is a B-complex type of a tablet which we give to every girl before she gets pregnant, ideally 3 months before she gets pregnant and for the first 3 months of getting pregnant. We know without any doubt with good proof that a girl who takes 3 months of folic acid pre-pregnancy and the first 3 months of her pregnancy, the pregnancy outcomes are better. We have less chances of having miscarriage and we have a very, very low chance of having a baby which is coming out abnormal like what we call neural tube defects. So folic acid is the best gift we can give to any girl who would like to look at getting pregnant soon. So in a nutshell, what we're looking at is improve your fitness before you get pregnant by exercise and correct diet. Come and see us. We'll give you some folic acid tablets. We'll just check on your blood tests and urine tests and check on your history and make sure that you're doing well when it comes to getting pregnant. And if that's there, then you'll have to take your pregnancy, enjoy your pregnancy, enjoy your delivery, have a better chance of having a natural delivery and you'll have a very quick recovery from the pregnancy as well.