How bad is it to be obese and pregnant?

[KoalaTray65]

How bad is it to be obese and pregnant?

For context, I’m 5 ft 5 and 14st 8, so bmi is 33.9. This weight gain was all post-pregnancy with my first child and when I got pregnant first time around I was chubby but only slightly over my healthy weight range. I know you should lose weight before pregnancy, and I’ve been dieting and exercising to try to get to a healthy weight but I’ve got the willpower of a child and it’s been incredibly slow.

This month I got fed up as I really want a second child and said F IT, and we started trying, but now I’m in the 2 week wait I’m panicking and realising that was a silly decision and I should wait until I’m a healthy weight. I blame ovulation hormones lol!

I know odds are that I’m not pregnant, and obviously if I am I’ll be overjoyed as I absolutely adore being a mum and a second child is wanted very badly, but I’ve been googling obsessively and convinced I’ll have caused myself and my baby no end of risks and health issues. Has anyone been a similar bmi and been fine, have I just been incredibly irresponsible? Really beating myself up at the moment!!!

I wouldn’t worry at all to be honest.

I was very slim with my first and similarly kept a fair bit of weight on with my second.

Labour was much easier, no diabetes concerns or anything. I did have to take a jab injection for 3 days after having him though.

It’s more tiring as you’re chasing the first but I was still walking significant distances up to the end. I remember taking my daughter to a birthday party a few days over due.

The only thing I had was sickness but I don’t believe that to be weight related and it did mean I lost some weight….

Fat itself doesn't cause problems in pregnancy. It's an indicator of possible other issues. If you don't drink,. don't smoke, eat well and exercise you will be fine. Everyone shrieked at me my entire pregnancy like I was a danger but actually I was really fit and healthy, just heavy. I had 50kg of fibrotic fat on me (lipoedema). If you are healthy don't let perfect get in the way of good enough.

Obviously it’s not ideal to be obese and pregnant but most people who are obese and pregnant have healthy pregnancies and babies without any incident so don’t feel silly. I’m sure a huge percentage of pregnant women are in the obese category when you look at the statistics of how many people are obese and overweight in general. Like on mumsnet there is so much criticism of mums over 35 as well and it’s like you are doomed to all sorts of health problems but most women that age have healthy pregnancies as well .

I thought being overweight and pregnant could cause problems with your pelvic floor as it puts a strain on it? I don’t know about it causing problems for the baby, so that’s good, but my friend has had various prolapses caused by pelvic floor issues, which she attributes to weight gain

Well breastfeeding made me lose weight.. look hopefully you are pregnant because time won’t come again, and that might motivate you to consider making healthy choices with food.. for you and your baby.. and Excercise.. swimming is great during pregnancy and I found it meditative.. I even cycled.. remember those pregnancy vitamins and folic acid and sure try and love yourself more, there is so much more to you than your body size..

Thanks so much everyone, the messages are really reassuring - I do eat healthy food and I have started to get back into exercise, I just struggle to stay in a deficit so weight loss has been slow!

I’ll go back to keeping my fingers crossed for a positive test result!

The heavyweight midwife on Instagram/ Facebook is amazing for support, advice and putting to bed concerns around bmi and pregnancy 💖

There won't be anything inherently wrong with being obese and pregnant, but I would just say watch out for gestational diabetes. Similarly, some midwives and Consultants will keep mentioning it at your appointments. I wasn't obese but I was slightly overweight, interestingly, my midwife was obese so it never got raised once!.

Anaesthetist pov… It is worth remembering that overweight/obesity can have very real implications for ladies that end up wanting/needing anaesthetic input at delivery (either pain relief for labour or anaesthesia for anything needing to be done in theatre). That is not so much to do with the long term health implications that come from being overweight but more to do with the distribution of the weight and the physical effects it can have. While weighing around 90ish kg is not super worrying, it’s becoming increasingly common for women to put on 20-30…even 40kg in pregnancy and then that can become much more high risk.

Look up Sara Wickham - i think she has a book about pregnancy when you have higher BMI. She is very good at assessing the actual evidence

Okay that’s good to know, thank you, I think I would likely need a c-section again as I had one for my first birth, so if I am pregnant I would need to limit weight gain during pregnancy then?

I’ll be honest and say I didn’t really know but I do know that Dr Sara Wickham has written a book about about plus size pregnancy and has broken down a lot of the studies and risks on her website. Her stuff is fab.

www.sarawickham.com/articles-2/six-things-you-need-to-know-if-youre-plus-size-and-pregnant/

I was overweight when I had dc2. It is possible to manage your pregnancy weight gain so you don’t balloon. I literally put on no weight until the last two months of the pregnancy. Which meant I was a better weight when dc was born.

And then I made sure I did loads and loads of exercise when baby was born - after one week of rest, I was walking 4 to 6 miles a day and it really helped.

My dsil was overweight when she got pregnant, the MW supported her to follow a healthy diet and she put very little weight on during her pregnancy and lost the weight quickly after the birth.

the Tommy’s website has quite a bit of info for women who have overweight/obesity. The advice is usually that once pregnant women shouldn’t be trying to lose weight/diet but that it may be sensible to try and limit weight gain a bit more than a woman starting from a lower weight might need to. IIRC there’s info on the site about nutrition rather than just nagging about calories. The labourpains website (run by the Obstetrician Anaesthetist Association) has some info about the anaesthetic side of things. As I said, normally weighing 90-100kg isn’t a massive issue for the anaesthetic side but if a woman then puts on 20-30kg that can start making things trickier. The ladies we probably worry most about are those starting out over about 130-140kg so you’re a long long way off that, but I do worry that sometimes we’re being a bit negligent by not mentioning that overweight can cause some increased risk at lower levels too.