Should I complain? Consultant & my weight.

[fatmumsclub]

Iv just had my 17 week app with the consultant (female) and when I left I felt like utter sh*t.

The first thing she said was 'we have a few things we need to go over, your overweight but I don't need to tell you that do I' as if to say, you can see your fat cant you! 🥴 then it went from there the whole focus was on how fat I am and how it is going to effect the pregnancy! Asking me if I was this overweight with DD! Which I was and then telling me how I had diabetes last time because of my weight and thats why I had a haemorrhage** to. So basically telling me everything that went 'wrong' last time was my fault because I am overweight then asked me if my blood pressure was high last pregnancy and when I said no it was fine she looked shocked and proceeded to tell me how my weight could lead to pre eclampsia!!

The thing is, I know I am overweight but there is a way of speaking to people!! you know like a human being! Iv never been made to feel like that in my entire life! None of the midwives I have seen have been overly concerned, they can hear baby's heartbeat fine and see him on a scan easily through all my 'mountains of fat!' So why was she such a cow🤦🏻‍♀️

Iv also name changed for this as it is quite embarrassing !!

But Fikel do you really think being spoken to like you're a stupid, irresponsible idiot actually gets people to accept help?

Thing is, if the health of your unborn child isn’t enough of a reason to accept help there’s really not much more a doctor can do. It’s their role to provide the facts so you have an accurate picture of your health. It’s not their role to try and convince you to accept help as if you were truly thinking about your child you’d have held off on TTC until you lost weight.

By the time you’re pregnant it’s largely too late for a lot of the risks anyway sadly, being obese at conception is the driving factor for a lot of the things that make someone’s pregnancy higher risk given that you can’t usually safely lose a significant enough amount of weight during pregnancy to lower those risks.

A lot more needs to be said to ensure women are fully aware that trying for a baby while obese is dangerous to both their health and also their child’s health, not just during pregnancy but beyond once they’re born. People deserve to be able to make informed choices. Sadly with the rise of the more toxic side of the body positivity movement it’s becoming harder for doctors to do their jobs and educate women on weight issues for fear of being accused of fat shaming. It’s a real problem.

I was close to being overweight when we started discussing a timeline for TTC and started to educate myself on what to do for the best chance of a healthy pregnancy, read the book Expecting Better which highlighted what risks you’re taking if you TTC while obese. scared the hell out of me but I held off until I’d lost enough weight to be a healthy BMI (I knew if I carried on I’d keep gaining weight). Sadly medical science doesn’t much care about people’s feelings about their weight, it’s cold hard science that being obese makes your pregnancy more dangerous and your child at a higher risk of several crucial health problems.

Oh, sorry Storm and thanks for the correction. I had thought 25 was overweight, 30 obese, 35 morbidly obese.

Either way the evidence shows that once you’re obese the risks are significant. They of course increase the higher your weight goes, but unless you can achieve a BMI of lower than 30 it’s a good idea to postpone TTC until you are able to.

• @IvanaPee I am not sensitive about my weight*

You clearly are

Which I was and then telling me how I had diabetes last time because of my weight and thats why I had a haemorrhage to. So basically telling me everything that went 'wrong' last time was my fault because I am overweight

my dad is diabetic hence why I had gestational diabetes and my midwife was shit and left me constantly probably why I ended up having a haemorrhage

Sorry for posting again but I just picked up on this. OP, you’re in massive denial. Despite be fact that being obese is a known risk factor in gestational diabetes and haemorrhage during birth you’re insistent that it’s someone or something else’s fault these things happened to you. You aren’t even able to acknowledge that your weight increased your changes of these issues even if you may have had other factors too.

www.nhs.uk/conditions/pregnancy-and-baby/overweight-pregnant/

www.tommys.org/our-organisation/research-by-pregnancy-complication/obesity/how-does-obesity-affect-blood

I really don’t mean this in a nasty way but having picked up on what you’ve said here reading for second time there’ll probably be something on your notes about how you’re unable or unwilling to acknowledge the risks of your weight during pregnancy and that’s probably why the consultant took a far more direct approach, as sugarcoating the pill wouldn’t really have worked with someone who sits there saying ‘no no, I have GD because of my dad and the blood loss was my midwife’s fault, it’s not remotely my fault even though everyone knows being obese massively increases the chances of both of those things happening!’

Sounds like she upset you as she didn’t buy into that line of thought to make you feel better and less guilty. So no, I really don’t think there’s grounds for complaint.

I encourage you to read Expecting Better or some of the NHS information on being obese in pregnancy to actually acknowledge the situation you’re in instead of trying to blame everything else. You’re pregnant now and can’t turn back time but you’ll continue to get short shrift from medics who know their stuff and can’t believe they have a pregnant lady with a BMI of 34 in front of them pretending her weight has zero bearing on her pregnancy.

By the time you’re pregnant it’s largely too late for a lot of the risks anyway sadly but that doesn't make it OK to talk to her the way the consultant did, unless your perspective is she's already a shot Mum so deserves to be talked to as such.

Shit

Your BMI is a cause for concern. Your consultant would have been negligent not to mention it. Just because you don't like the way the message was delivered, doesn't mean it doesn't count. Maybe your consultant wanted to nudge you into action.

Doctor was stating facts and that your weight is endangering the lives of yourself and your baby.

It's hard to say if she was rude or challenging from a forum. From what you said (the 'I don't need to tell you that') comment, it sounds like she was challenging you. This isn't inappropriate, she needs to counsel you on the risks. There may have been a softer approach but she may have thought you wouldn't have heard this.

I'd echo PPs that it sounds like you're massively minimising the impact of your weight on GD and bleeding.

Hmm. I was overweight in my last pregnancy, and I know how you feel. But the truth is that it IS an extra risk factor in your pregnancy, so you ARE putting your baby at risk (as did I). It's like smoking or drinking really- you'd expect your consultant to speak to you in a straightforward way about any lifestyle traits which puts your unborn baby at risk.

fat women are treat horrendously by medical professionals in general but especially in pregnancy, and i say that as a smoker, I went cold turkey smoking wise with both but when experiencing rudeness I would say quitting smoking hasn't helped and they would be all ooh don't worry about that love cut down slowly

I think that they should try to be thoughtful in their treatment of patients, but also that we do not know if we would always be able to be so objective in their situation.
She may have just lost a mother or baby (or both) due to a weight related issue, and not realised that she came across as brusque or insensitive. Maybe it's just her manner, and making a complaint might give her some extra training? I'm not sure. I think sometimes doctors can forget the human aspect of their job and see you just as a body.

Obviously it's not ok for you to feel upset. But I have been a smoker at booking in, and both over and underweight at booking in. You have to have a thick skin sometimes!

Honestly the consultant was just doing their job. You are overweight which puts you and child at risk. It isn't doctor's fault that you don't want to listen

but that doesn't make it OK to talk to her the way the consultant did, unless your perspective is she's already a shot Mum so deserves to be talked to as such.

Not at all. If you read my other post I’ve explained why I reckon the doctor spoke to OP firmly rather than cautiously. OP is in denial about her weight and the dangerous impact it could have on her unborn child both during pregnancy and beyond birth. She is blaming everything else for the weight related complications she endured last time (while simultaneously claiming everything went fine). This won’t have gone unnoticed and OP probably has a note on her file for professionals to be aware that she is unable or willing to understand the risks of her pregnancy. Being more direct is one way to mitigate that.

I honestly don't think that what she said was rude at all. It sounds like she was saying that she knows that you know you're overweight so didn't need to lecture you about it.

You do sound very defensive about your weight, and in denial about what caused your issues in your previous pregnancy.

Hard to say as we can't assess tone etc but factually you are at increased risk of health complications. If this were over smoking, nobody would say you should complain. I don't see why risks from being overweight are any different. Both are preventable.

The OP has a BMI of 31 not 34 - her height was written down wrong. If you’re going to lambast someone quite so rudely online at least get your facts (and your thresholds) right.

Why do people insist on claiming that the OP just can’t handle talk about their weight? I’m overweight and I’ve had endless (well, some) medical conversations about it. I’m not in denial, but I find rudeness upsetting. Fat people are allowed to find rudeness upsetting. Eg the Family Planning Clinic doctor who left the room for something, stood in the corridor and said loudly to a colleague ‘this one’s way too big for the pill but I can tell she’s going to ask me for it’ and laughed, and then told me not to assume my partner would want to have kids with me any more. And then prescribed me the wrong strength of birth control. As opposed to the sensible conversations I’ve had before and since about appropriate contraception given my weight, including one with a doctor who spotted that Depo had contributed to my weight gain.

Or the orthopaedic registrar who told me I needed to go on the ‘Auschwitz’ diet when I told him my weight loss efforts were slow.

I have often had perfectly sensible and civil discussions of my weight, even when pregnant, with health care professionals who look at me as an individual with a myriad of factors rather than just being overweight.

In all fairness isitmybathtimeyet you seem to have been treated much worse than the OP.

But the OP found her consultant rude so who are we to say she wasn’t? The things she quotes can be said well or badly. Most overweight people spend a lot of their time on the end of rudeness of some sort, including on this site, on the basis of their weight. It’s an acceptable prejudice. I imagine the encounters I mention, and others I didn’t, are familiar to lots of overweight people sadly.

The OP (original post/poster) has a BMI of 31 not 34 - her height was written down wrong.

To be fair, like I said earlier, although the heavier you are the more significant the risks, the dangers of being obese in pregnancy are apparent from a BMI of thirty and above, everything from the chance of miscarriage being higher to SIDS being more likely to more chance of a c section to baby getting their shoulder stuck on the way out (dystocia). So while of course it’s good to be accurate, OP’s BMI being 31 rather than 34 doesn’t significantly reduce any of those risks. They come into being at clinically obese. Interestingly if you read the research there doesn’t seem to be an increased risk for women who are overweight. It becomes dangerous once you hit obesity.

Which again, really needs to be common knowledge (I’d have thought most people were aware of the risks of being obese, smoking and drinking during pregnancy but this thread has shown clearly not always). Some hard work now getting to a healthier weight pays dividends for the safety of your unborn child and for the likelihood of having a successful pregnancy. Surely that’s worth delaying TTC for a few months. It must be frustrating as a doctor to see people going into pregnancy with risky behaviours time and time again. I’m sure that’s not why the doctor was direct though.

Sorry you went through that Isitmybathtimeyet your clincians said some really inappropriate and rude things to you and within your earshot, that’s certainly worthy of a complaint. It is a world apart from OP’s description of her appointment.

Fat people are allowed to find rudeness,offensive. like I said smokers and drinkers get more gentle treatment. the attitude of you fallen fatty you should tolerate fat shaming because of a, b and c creates a climate where unacceptable medical treatment is normalised.

Sounds like you got a very plain speaking doctor. Since being rude is all in the intent we really aren't in a position to judge if she was rude or not. You seem to accept that all of her concerns were reasonable given your weight. There's no good way to point out that someone is fat so anything she said wasn't going to land well. You shouldn't complain she was doing her job.

I was a size 16 and my midwife queried whether I would fit in the standard scanner 😂

I'm fat, like properly fat, like morbidly obese fat and I'm pregnant.
Once I stopped crying because I was fat and pregnant and all kinds of terrible things were going to happen to me and my baby because I was hugely fat I spoke to my midwife.
She very kindly pointed out the additional risks I am at because of my weight and also pointed out that I was at an INCREASED risk of these things. Thin people can get them too it's just a bit more likely that they'll happen to me.
However I will be closely monitored and the odds are that everything will be ok. There is no need to be rude, I know I'm fat, I'm much less fat than I used to be but I'm still fat however children aren't a privilege for thinner people. I wouldn't be happy being spoken to like that and I'm a hell of a lot bigger than you are. All the best for the rest of your pregnancy. (Sits back and waits to be roasted for being morbidly obese and having the cheek to procreate).