Mothers diet impact on babies weight?

[bumblecream]

Posted in AIBU as I want some honest responses, no beating around the bush so as not to upset the pregnant woman.

If there’s any midwives or doctors about I’d like to hear what you have to say in particular.

Does what a mother eats impact on a babies birth weight? And does the kind of food they eat impact on babies weight?

My ds was a whopper when born, over 9lb.
I’m not overweight normal bmi, and put on 2.5 stone during my pregnancy which from what I understand is not huge.
However my choices weren’t great. I ate a lot of sugary stuff, bread, that kind of thing.
Could this have caused the baby to be so big?
No gestational diabetes or anything like that.

Im pregnant again, healthy weight to begin with so was considered low risk, but I can’t seem to get a straight answer out of my midwife about whether ds would have been quite so big, if I’d been scoffing green beans and brown pasta instead of donuts.
Ds birth was horrific and did cause a lot of damage and I’m wondering if a healthier diet this time could increase my chances of having a smaller but healthy weight baby. After all it’s the babies safety too, as well as my own. An easier delivery would be in both our interests.

Thanks everyone this is really interesting.
I wonder if the high sugar and birth weight link is only in some cases if you go on to develop gestational diabetes.
I suppose it won’t do me any harm to make a bit more effort with healthy eating.
It just seems so difficult with the winter coming on and all the delicious sugary foods over Christmas I just know I’m going to struggle. Regardless of the fact I can manage to say no when not pregnant.
It mush be a hormonal thing making me want to eat and eat and eat sugar!

Have a read of the gentle birth method. It advocates a specific but healthy diet (wheat free sugar free) with the aim of ensuring that the baby is the right size for you (the woman who wrote it is an gynae- she says the problem isn’t so much big babies as babies too big for mum)

To be honest a good diet is only ever going to be good news isn’t it?

Especially with dd2 I was sick all the time and lost a couple of stone. She was nearly 7lb.