Being Overweight During Pregnancy Leads to Heavier Babies, Study Reports

If you’re trying to get pregnant and have a few pounds to lose, it may seem like a good idea to wait until after you have the baby to lose weight – you’re just going to gain weight during pregnancy anyway, right? Wrong. It might be easier on you, but not your baby. According to a new study, women who are overweight during pregnancy tend to have much heavier babies than normal-weight mothers.

The study published in the journal Diabetes Care examined health records for nearly 10,000 women who delivered babies at a Kaiser Permanente medical center in California between 2005 and 2010. About 60 percent were overweight or obese, and nearly 20 percent of those women developed gestational diabetes.

Overweight moms without gestational diabetes were 65 percent more likely to have babies with a birth weight in the 90th percentile or higher, compared to women of healthy weights.

But obese women without gestational diabetes were 163 percent more likely to have overly large babies.

The chances of having a heavy baby increased whether or not the mom had gestational diabetes, a known risk factor for larger birth weights. In other words: Maternal obesity alone is a risk factor in having heavy babies.

“This suggests that there may be other nutrients that are crossing the placenta in overabundance leading to some changes in the physiology and metabolism of the baby,” said study author Mary Helen Black, a biostatistician with Kaiser Permanente Southern California’s department of research and evaluation.

Heavy babies have a greater risk of being overweight as children and adults, increasing their chances of developing type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, and other health problems. It also increases the risk for complications during delivery.

“If the baby is born too large it increases the risk for very serious consequences both during delivery, for the mother and the infant, as well as later in life — for the infant. There may be a general perception that, ‘Oh, the baby’s big, but so what?’ That’s a misperception.”

Talk to your health care provider to find out if you’re in a healthy body weight range before thinking about starting a family – both for you and your baby!

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