Can you cause complications in pregnancy by eating too much cake??

[BotBotticelli]

My not so lovely mother has made a few snide comments about how I should watch what i eat during this pregnancy for DC2 to avoid the baby being 'enormous again' (DS1 was 9lb4), and to to 'avoid getting diabetes'.

She is a pretty horrible woman most of the time so i know I should probably just ignore this, but her comments have stuck and they're worrying me.

i have a sweet tooth at the best of times...and this is not the best of times!! I am very hungry this pregnancy and a worried that i am eating too much/too much bad stuff and am gonna cause problems for myself and the baby.

Is this is legitimate concern, or should I just chill out?

For example, here is what I ate yesterday, which is pretty average at the moment (am 16 weeks and often feel ravenous!)

• Bowl of shreddies with milk for breakfast at home.
• Piece of toast with butter for second breakfast when i get to the office.

• 1 slice of pumpkin seed crispbread as a snack mid morning (have recently brought a pack of these into the office to stop myself raiding the meeting room biscuits at 11am!).

• A plate of veggie chilli with chips and salad for lunch from the office canteen

• A can of pepsi max and a large white chocolate cookie mid afternoon

• A slice of toast at 6pm when giving DS his supper after nursery.

• Smoked haddock fillet in a creme fraiche saude (homemade) with roasted potato, carrots and peas for dinner at 8pm.

Gawd....that's a lot of food isn't it, when it's all written down like that??

Anyone else being a total glutton? Am I going to make myself/the baby ill if I keep this up??

Oh - and some days the mid afternoon 'snack' in the office is worse than just a cookie. Sometimes it's a slice of pecan pie from the canteen. Or a custard donut. Or a yumyum. You get the picture. One of the above every sodding day. Is this awful?? have lost all sense of perspective about food :(

Oh an one final thing - not sure if it makes any difference - but at my booking appointment my BMI was 25.8, so on the upper end of 'ok' or the low side of 'overweight' depending on how you look at it.

I am/was a curvy size 14, and am 5 foot 8 inches tall.

I reckon eat when you're hungry, but try to cut out the regular Pepsi and cookie.

Can you replace the Pepsi with orange juice and the cookie with a piece of fruit or something?

I'm pregnant and crazy hungry too. And yes, I have a sweet tooth. Yesterday it was two puff pastry apple pies

Yes, gestational diabetes is conventionally known to be a thing (though there are some who would dispute that) and can cause baby to be born chubby.

Eating the whole gateau wouldn't do you a lot of good.

A slice of cake or a cookie, unless you're already at risk of GD, isn't going to do any harm.

You could probably do with a breakfast with some protein in, unless you really can't face it, but there's nothing wrong with that day's food, so long as portions are moderately sized.

I'm interested to read responses as I ate absolutely everything in sight when I was pregnant and DS was 11lb7oz!
Midwife did tell me that babies can't be fat, so they take only what they need and my eating everything was only going to affect my body. I put on a lot of weight! So that made me feel a bit better. But I still wonder if he'd be smaller if I ate less shit.

I dint think your diet is that bad. Yes you could certainly cut out some of the more sugar laden snacks and the pop, but I honestly thought your menu was going to read cake for breakfast, cake for lunch and cake for dinner.

In terms of size of baby I honestly don't know. With DS I had a VERY active job and didn't overeat, so I was basically bump. He was 7lb 8.

Your diet doesn't sound bad to me at all. I'm almost always ravenous when pregnant.

It's important to note that you don't cause GD through diet. If you're at risk, and have undiagnosed GD, and your baby is getting large amounts of sugar because your body isn't managing your sugars very well, then yes, baby can grow bigger than it would otherwise have done.

You do not get GD from eating too much cake.

I lived on cake in my first pregnancy. . Baby was 6.7. Only side effect was that he has inherited his mother's love of cake

Your diet doesn't sound that bad at all tell your MIL to DFOD

I ate loads in pregnancy and gained 4 stone when pregnant with DC1 and three stone with DC2 (I had lost 3 stone in the two years between the two pregnancies). My weight was never commented on but I do wonder if it explains why DC2 was a pound lighter than DC1 when second babies tend to be bigger.
I have to say that there were downsides for me. My bum grew out of my maternity trousers before my bump did! I also think I may have been able to get a bit more comfortable during the final weeks of pregnancy and during labour if I hadn't been quite so massive.
But there was nothing I could do other than eat when pregnant. As well as the meals you describe, I was often getting up at 4am for toast & an apple! In my second pregnancy, I was determined not to eat as much but completely failed. The difference was that I had a toddler so had to be more active during my pregnancy.
Annoyingly, the weight never fell off me as breastfeeding made me ravenous too & I have had to work hard to lose the weight after both pregnancies.
DC1 started school last September and I aimed to be back at my pre-pregnancy weight by the time she started which I was, actually I was half a stone lighter.

I bloody well hope cake doesn't cause complications, my baby is screwed if so!

Think your diet sounds pretty good to me. If it were me I'd probably cut out the Pepsi while pregnant, as it's empty calories and full of stuff that probably isn't great for you or baby. I'd also probably do the cake every other day and replace one day with choc covered rice/corn cakes and fruit and maybe choose a lower sugar cereal. I'd have to do that I eat SO much cereal that I have to go sugar-free so that I can eat as much as I like! But it's your body and you can do as you please. As you've suggested, your DM was bang out of order.

Did you have GD last time? If so then maybe she has more of a point but if not then your babies size was not a lot to do with what what you ate. During my first pregnancy I certainly over ate and put on too much weight and DS was 6lbs14. This pregnancy I've eaten much less but by all estimates DC2 is measuring up to be much the same. You make the babies you make.
The general idea I get about eating when pregnant is to eat when you are hungry, making healthy choices as far as possible.

I do have a question for following posters though, something I've always wondered about and some really relevant to your post. I've been told by many people, here and in RL that you can't 'give yourself GD' but then I see online, in books and magazines lots of articles about how to 'avoid getting GD'. Well, if you can't give it to yourself, how can you avoid it?

If cake could damage your baby, my DD would not be here. I had such cravings, I had a slice of cake every day during that pregnancy. And a fizzy orange drink, thanks to a bizarre Tango/Fanta/San Pellegrino craving.

I don't recommend it, because while DD was fine and quite small at birth, I certainly wasn't. I had loads of fluid retention and put on a shedload of weight (with associated back pain which still returns sometimes) that I am still working to shift (DD is 3). Recovery was much harder than with my first pregnancy, when all I craved was oranges.

I would try and have more wholemeal cereal/bread/grains, less sugar, and more protein. Drop fizzy drinks and juice-eat the whole fruit instead. Do eat cake, but try not to do it every day and keep the portions small. Try and make yourself snack on things like nuts and carrot sticks. The fact that they are less nice than cake will stop you eating more than you really want.

To me looks like you are eating too much of a bread, toast, etc-like same cathegory food also including the cereals and baked cookies.

You mentioned no fuit, nuts or snack veggies, hardboiled eggs and little protein.

Try replace some with snacks of nuts, little carrots, plum tomatoes.

Thanks all, that's mostly reassuring. It's so hard stopping having sweet treats when (a) I really enjoy them and (b) they help me get through the dreary afternoons at work!

I like the idea of maybe making the mid-afternoon snack thing a once-every-other-day treat rather than daily. and having fruit instead on the other days. Will try that.

The Pepsi Max has no sugar in (but obvs is full of aspartame and other shite which i am sure I shouldn't be drinking either!) and the Shreddies are not the frosted/sugared ones....although i am sure they probably contain a lot of sugar anyway, cos all cereal does, right?

bagofsnakes yes that's always bothered me too...i am sure I have read things about 'giving yourself' or 'getting' GD as a result of your diet, but can't seem to find a definitive statement on whether that's true or not.

In terms of my previous pregnancy, I was never told I was at risk of GD, never tested for it, nothing odd ever found in my urine samples at MW appointments. I just had an enormo-baby with no warning! (which secretly, despite my mother's apparent horror, i LOVED! he was this gorgeous great big strapping boy who could hold his head up at birth and looked me right in the eyes with these big old-soul eyes the moment he was handed to me and I loved his big size, never felt scared of 'breaking' him if you know what i mean).

But am a bit terrified that this one will be 11lb and will rip me in half, iyswim??!

I was told that although you still have to watch what you eat in pregnancy, cake can't cause GD - it's all about hormones and how your body reacts to the pregnancy.

If cake causes pregnancy complications, I would've really struggled in pregnancy - as it was I had no GD and DD is very healthy :)

I am 36+1 and have had cake an chocolate every day - I thought that was mandatory for pregnant women.

Wow she sounds delightful for what it's worth I don't think I'd class your first DS as enormous, he's about the same as DS was and was totally average size for our family, is your DP tall too? Do you know what size her babies were?

In any case I'm not convinced weight is the issue when popping them out - just the size of the head

I ate a 4 pack of M&S blueberry muffins everyday when I was pregnant!

I ate a ridiculous amount when I was expecting my DS & had an enormous bump & yet he was only 6lb 15oz so I wouldn't worry. I would try & give up the Pepsi though if I were you.

I don't think you can get GD from eating too much cake...

heartisaspade, did someone tell you that you got GD because you ate too much or did you just assume because you hadn't had it first time around? A genuine question by the way!!

GD is more common the older you get. If you are a candidate for it (either because you are over-weight before pregnancy or because it's hereditary) you will get it if you're unlucky. Some people may not get it first time around but because they're older second time, they can get it. Having said that, I've known someone who got it first time around and didn't get it second time around.

I got it in pregnancy. I was a size 10 and didn't eat sweet things. I gained a stone in pregnancy, at my most pregnant I was 11st 10 and I'm 5ft 8. I still got it. None of my sisters did (2 of whom were obese before pregnancy) so I was the unlucky one, but also the oldest and the MWs think that's maybe why I got it. I was on insulin injections 5 times a day aswell, not even diet managed.

It was crap but I'd do it again if after nearly three years of fucking ttc I could get pregnant again.

So enjoy your cake OP. If you get it, you most likely would have got it anyway. Good luck!

Hello Botbot congratulations on pregnancy number 2! how far along are you?

I ate far too much sugary crap in my second pregnancy and I'm afraid to say I DID get gestational diabetes. Only very borderline, I just failed the 1 hour test

This applies to me too. I get a sweet tooth in pregnancy and I totally indulged it this time round. I now have a GD diagnosis and all the accompanying restrictions and risks . Now, I can't say whether all the cake and biscuits and chocolate caused the GD, but if I had my time again I'd cut back on the cake so at least I knew I hadn't caused the GD.

BTW the risks of enormo-baby (macrosomia) from GD are more than tearing - bigger risk of shoulder dystocia at birth, bigger risk of stillbirth, bigger risk of obesity later in life... etc. But think those only apply if the hugeness is due to GD, not if it's just the way you make 'em, iyswim.

That all said, your diet really doesn't sound that bad. And if you're in first trimester, I say go with it - I needed loads of food to keep me from feeling sick.

BotBotticelli your DS sounds like he was a gorgeous baby and if you didn't have GD, that's just the size of baby you make. Second one could well be bigger (people do say second ones are) although every HCP I see tells me my DC2 is shaping up to be a fraction smaller than my DC1... but that's only as far as they can tell, they're never spot on.

As for sugar-free cereal, you're right even the 'plain' ones are usually full of sugar. Now I don't know how you feel about muesli but I love Jorden's no added salt/sugar muesli (it comes in a bag). If I really need a little more 'sugar in my bowl', I add a handful of Dorset Cereal honey granola. It does have honey and golden syrup in it but I figure it's only a handful and sometimes I neeeed it! Sometimes an afternoon bowl of cereal and some fruit satisfies my need for sweet and so I avoid the biscuit tin.

All the best for the rest of the pregnancy, sure it's going to go swimmingly