A Healthy Beginning for Pregnancy

It's been your dream, giving birth to a healthy, happy baby. PregnancyPregnancy is as natural as the birds and bees, but in today's world it takes planning to make sure things go well.

If you've been taking your health for granted -- getting by on little sleep, hitting the martini bars, forgetting dental exams -- it's time to assess your lifestyle and make some changes.

To give your baby the healthiest beginning, take steps in the months before you conceive, says Connie Graves, MD, director of maternal-fetal medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn. "You want to start with a very healthy body, and you want to minimize risk factors that can hurt the baby or hurt you."

By making healthy lifestyle changes, you may even boost your odds of getting pregnant. "One of my patients just had her third child at age 42," Graves tells WebMD. "She's a perfect example that maintaining a healthy lifestyle will help preserve fertilityfertility and assist conception."