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Rh incompatibility occurs when a mother with a negative blood type conceives a child with a positive blood type. It can cause serious health problems for the baby, but can be prevented with a dose of RhoGAM during the 28th week of the first pregnancy. Regular prenatal care is important to monitor for potential risk factors.
Rh incompatibility is a very rare but serious condition. It is completely preventable, given how easily a mother’s blood can be tested. In essence, the Rh factor is a specific protein that exists on the blood cells of people who have positive blood. If one lacks this protein, a perfectly healthy variant, one is considered blood negative.
Rh incompatibility occurs only in pregnant women with a negative blood type. She must also conceive a child with a positive blood type. This means that the birth father must have positive blood. During a woman’s first pregnancy, Rh incompatibility usually does not occur, even if the baby she is carrying has positive blood. However, after giving birth, the woman was exposed to the baby’s blood type and will develop antibodies to the protein that her own blood does not carry.
This can have a significant impact on future pregnancies, and to avoid Rh incompatibility in another pregnancy, a woman with Rh negative blood is given a dose of RhoGAM, during the 28th week of her first pregnancy. This causes her body to ignore and not sensitize to the baby’s positive blood type. She is also given another injection soon after giving birth or after a miscarriage.
During future pregnancies, these shots can be repeated. Blood tests during pregnancy monitor for the presence of Rh antibodies, which could indicate a problem. A high amount of Rh antibodies could mean another injection of RhoGAM.
Not all blood-negative women who have a child with a blood-positive man will develop Rh incompatibility with their unborn child. Basically, every child has a 50% chance of having a blood type that is incompatible with their mother. It is not, on the surface, easy to type the blood of an unborn baby, unless an amniocentesis is performed, or the mother’s blood shows a high number of antibodies against positive blood.
However, it’s not worth risking the life-threatening side effects that can occur to the baby when a mother has Rh incompatibility. Babies born to mothers who have an immune response to the baby’s blood type can have mental retardation, severe jaundice, hearing loss, speech impairment, heart defects, and a host of other life-threatening conditions. It should be noted that the mother does not have Rh incompatibility; only the child will show symptoms.
In the United States, in most states, blood types were usually taken when applying for a marriage license. That’s not the case anymore, and clearly not all pregnant women are married. Because Rh incompatibility is so preventable, it is very important for a pregnant woman to know her blood type and know about potential risk factors.
First, the woman has a negative blood type. If the woman has had a miscarriage or abortion in the past, Rh incompatibility may still exist. Also, if the woman has ever had a blood transfusion, this should also be noted. The occasional blood transfusion may have been with Rh-positive blood, meaning that the woman had already developed antibodies against the Rh-positive blood.
Rh incompatibility is another reason regular prenatal care is so important. Since the mother tends not to show any signs of Rh incompatibility, she may be completely unaware that the life and health of her expected baby is at risk. Antenatal care quickly assesses this possible risk and treats it when necessary.
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