If you are careful about what you eat in pregnancy, can you make sure you don't have a whopper baby?

[dinny]

As ds was big and got stuck - want to avoid the same situ

thanks, Dinny

Pruners, that's really interesting, it MUST be related, mustn't it?

No, I don't think so.

I was 10lb 6oz at birth - my mother didn't want another big one so was very careful what she ate second time around and still got a 9lb 12oz one. We have a big babies in our family.

I ate the same for DS1 and DS2, put on roughly the same amount of weight (16lbs and 18lbs) and DS1 was 6lb 10oz (think he takes after his father who was the same weight at birth) and DS2 was 9lb

Give them a go, Dinny. They'll either have the most up-to-date info or get back to you with it. Provided there's good evidence out there

Niecie, but 9.12 is considerably less than 10.6, isn't it?

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with ds1 I stuffed myself with processed sausages, pork pies etc and put on 5 stone. Ds1 weighed 8lb exactly.
ds2 I'd lost the weight, ate well but healthily and put on 3 stone. He too was 8 lb exactly.
so in my case made no difference whatsoever and I'm obviously programmed to have 8lb babies

I had 9lb 7oz first baby which while not 100% stuck had to be forcepped out and am pregnant with number 2 so have a vested interest in this topic.
I read Sheila Kitzinger's 'Rediscovering Birth' which was about what happens/happened in traditional societies (and IIRR ) it said in a lot of trad societies women cut back on eating in last 5 weeks of pregnancy and focused on fruit and vegetables, and it was specifically to stop the baby getting 'too big'. Somehow this has stuck with me and intend to try and eat tons of fruit and veg and not too much rubbish from week 35. Not there yet though .

Dinny I suppose it is 10 oz but we both still big babies by anybody's standards.

My mum say she really went for it first time around and ate for 2 and ate normally second time around and it didn't make a significant difference. DB was a bit earlier than me too so that would have accounted for a little bit of the lower weight.

I didn't think weight gain or how much you ate had any bearing on it.

I gained a TON of water weight with DD2. She was 6lbs., 3oz.

Ditto with DD1 and she was 7lbs., 1oz.

But saying that, I never gained much 'real' weight adn I could never overeat because they both either made me very sick or gave me terrible heartburn.

DS1 is proving no exception to this - I usually just eat two small flapjacks + fruit or a sachet of porridge with honey and dried fruit in the morning, nothing until lunch and then it's reheated lefotvers with yoghurt laced with fruit mixed in for pud and a cooked tea of some sort with maybe a few biscuits or a cup of fruit smoothie.

That's about it.

The baby is sitting very high up and I don't have a very long torso, so I constantly feel full.

I've never been able to manage large portions, but especially during pregnancy.

Ooh, Expat, love your referring to DS1! DS2, 3 etc in the plans?

yeah, Expat, I have quite a short torso too and got so full late on with dd and ds

when are you due, btw?

no you canont, although the gowri mothra gentle birth method recommends a particular diet to make sure baby and motehr are in optimum health for birth.

however, if you restrict your intake, the baby will just leach everything out of you and you will you suffer so the baby can grow, as they are essentially parasites!

babies of all sizes can get stuck, it is not simply to do with the size. but lots of different factors

I gained 60 pounds in my first two pregnancies and ds1 was 6 lbs 1 oz and ds2 was 7 lb. 10 oz.

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lulumama speaks sense! I am overweight but had a poor appetite when pregnant with both my boys. I still ate and it was mostly healthy but wasn't snacking between meals like I normally do. I lost a substatial about of weight both times yet both babies were 8lb 1oz so they obviously took what they needed from me!

no worries pruners, i vagueley recalled something about decongseting the pelvis..

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i know some large girls who had small babies and i was quite slim and had a large baby

im not sure if the food intake affects the baby so much - more the mum's thighs..!

Not sure if I'm repeating here, but the biggest (not only!) predictor of birth weight is mother's birth weight.

So unless we're talking malnutrition, its out of your hands.

If anyone saw "Britain's Biggest Babies" a few weeks ago, the upshot of that seemed to be:

• some very large women have very large babies;

• some not very large women have very large babies;

• some very large women have very small babies.

I personally would have loved to see the researcher's face when the 25 stone woman predicted to have a baby of "at least 10lb" had a 6lb baby. What they did show however was that even when a very large woman had a small-ish baby, the baby seemed to gain weight quickly after birth and tended to become larger than average very quickly.

I am slim and short - my third baby was well over 9 and a half lb. Getting a bit worried about no.4 now ....

after having a 10-pounder as her second baby, my (slim, normal height) sis in law folllowed a gestational diabetes diet for her next three and they were all smaller.

mmm, interesting...

There is some research to show that babies born to mums with hyperemesis are actually larger than average - the body seems to react and send more to the baby.

Personally I was sick all the way through and was the same weight at full term as when I started. DS was 7.5 pounds. Interestingly I was 7.5 pounds at birth too!

DS was 12lb 12oz, so I think we can call that big. I barely ate for the first 14 weeks as I was so sick, then could only stomach a very limited diet. Towards the end I will confess to a craving for donuts but I really didn't gain that much weight, and we're talking the last few weeks there. However I was 10lb 6oz and going by charitygirl's point that is more important.