Pregnancy care and your GP: from planning to shared care
Whether you're thinking about a baby, staring at a positive test, or already booked in at a hospital clinic, your GP has a bigger role in pregnancy than many people realise. Here's how it works, visit by visit.
What is a preconception health check?
It's a GP visit before you start trying, ideally around three months ahead. Your GP reviews your health and any medicines, checks that screening and immunisations are up to date, arranges any useful blood tests, and talks through supplements they may recommend. Folate is the standard one, started before conception. It's also a good time to ask anything at all.
Partners are welcome too. Preconception health is a shared project, and questions about timing, fertility and family history are all fair game. It's also worth checking your cervical screening is current, since routine screening is usually deferred during pregnancy.
When should I see a GP after a positive pregnancy test?
Book in around six to eight weeks of pregnancy, or earlier if you have symptoms that worry you or a history of complications. The first visits confirm the pregnancy and your dates, arrange early tests and an ultrasound referral, and help you choose where you'd like to have your baby.
Those first appointments are deliberately longer. Expect conversation about your health history, routine blood and urine tests, a dating scan referral, and a walk-through of your care options (public hospital clinic, shared care, private obstetrician or midwifery care) so you can choose with the full picture.
What is antenatal shared care?
Antenatal shared care means your GP provides many of your routine pregnancy check-ups, sharing your care with your chosen hospital clinic or obstetrician, who you still see at key points. For low-risk pregnancies it's a well-established option. More of your visits happen close to home, with a doctor who knows you.
In practice, your GP and the hospital work from a shared record: your GP does the routine checks (blood pressure, growth, your questions) and the hospital team sees you at scheduled milestones and for the birth itself. Appointments near home are easier to fit around work, and the same doctor can keep caring for you and your baby after the birth.
Shared care isn't "less" care. It's the same schedule of checks, with more of them done by a doctor who already knows your story.
Which early pregnancy symptoms need review?
Nausea, tiredness, breast tenderness and mild cramping are common in early pregnancy. Contact your GP or hospital promptly if you have vaginal bleeding, severe or one-sided abdominal pain, dizziness or fainting, fever, pain passing urine, or vomiting so persistent you can't keep fluids down.
- Usually normal: morning nausea (at any hour), fatigue, food aversions, tender breasts, mild period-like cramps.
- See your GP soon: vomiting that's affecting eating and drinking, low mood or anxiety that isn't lifting, anything that just doesn't feel right to you.
- Same day, GP or hospital: bleeding, severe or one-sided pain, fever, fainting, or later in pregnancy, a noticeable drop in your baby's movements.
What about vaccinations during pregnancy?
Some vaccines are recommended during pregnancy because they protect both you and your baby in the first months of life, and others are best given before or after pregnancy instead. Your GP will advise which ones apply to you and when in the pregnancy they're best given. It's a standard part of antenatal care, and a good question for your first visit.
Planning, or newly pregnant?
Start with a GP visit, seven days a week.
How Sirius Health can help
Our Chatswood GPs provide preconception checks, early pregnancy care and antenatal shared care alongside your chosen hospital or obstetrician. See our women's health page for the full picture, or start with a general practice appointment if you're not sure where to begin. We consult in English, Cantonese, Mandarin and Hakka, and you're welcome to request a female doctor.
Sources: healthdirect, Antenatal care; Pregnancy, Birth and Baby, GP shared care; Australian Government Department of Health, Pregnancy Care Guidelines.