Dr. Peter Boylan:

There is a great personal interpretation of risk so what some person may feel is a low risk, another person may feel is a high risk. In the context of pregnancy, which is a very dynamic process where risk can change and the disease process can deteriorate very rapidly, women will approach risk in a different way. I think it is important to take women's viewpoints into consideration when we are dealing with them in the management of pregnancy - it is their lives that are at risk. Some women will risk anything to have a baby. For other women, for example, a woman who is 40 years of age and has four young children at home, who has diabetes which is deteriorating, and who finds herself pregnant and knows that if she continues with the pregnancy, her diabetes will get worse, her eyesight might be affected and her kidneys might deteriorate and so on, for her, that is not an acceptable risk. For a woman in her first pregnancy after, say, years of IVF, she may well be willing to accept that risk. So, while we can describe risk as low, middle and high, it is the woman's interpretation of what the risk is to her personally that is critically important in how we deal with women who are pregnant, and that side of it really has to be taken into account.