Routine antenatal care for women and their babies: summary of NICE guidance

### What you need to know Around 660 000 women give birth in England and Wales each year. Antenatal care provides women (and their partners) with support and information about pregnancy, birth, and the postnatal period, and assesses their risk of complications. Even in fit and healthy women, concerns and complications can still arise, and good quality antenatal care can enable women to identify and manage potential problems, to reduce the chance of poor outcomes for both the woman and the baby, and to enhance the woman’s (and her partner’s) experience of pregnancy and childbirth. This new guideline from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)1 replaces the previous version of the NICE guideline on antenatal care published in 2008. This article summarises recommendations from the guideline. We use the terms “woman” or “mother” throughout, but the guidance should be taken to include people who do not identify as women but who are pregnant. ### What is new in this guidance