Does Your Weight Affect Your Unborn Baby's Development?

You want a healthy baby. That’s why you’re taking pregnancy vitamins, attending antenatal appointments and only buying non-alcoholic drinks.

But there’s another vital element that you may not have considered. That’s your weight.

How Your Weight Affects Your Body

As the School of Public Health at Harvard University notes, “A healthy weight sets the stage for bones, muscles, brain, heart, and others to play their parts smoothly and efficiently for many years.”

Unfortunately, more and more of us do not have a healthy weight.

Obesity means having a body mass index (BMI) over 30. That’s calculated by dividing your weight in kilograms by your height in metres squared. If you’d like to know your BMI, you can use the BMI calculator on our homepage.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW), 31% of Australians are now obese. That’s several million people, including many women of childbearing age.

Obesity means far more than a larger clothing size. Your weight affects every system in your body. It weakens your musculoskeletal system, reduces your reproductive capacity, diminishes your respiratory function and lowers your mood. And it raises your risk of several serious conditions including diabetes, heart disease and some cancers.

How Does Obesity Affect Pregnancy And Birth?

Obesity makes it harder to become pregnant in the first place.

Once you do conceive, obesity makes it a high-risk pregnancy for both you and your unborn baby, particularly as the months go on.

You are more likely to experience:

• High blood pressure and a very serious condition called pre-eclampsia

• Gestational diabetes – raised blood sugar that increases the risk of having a very large baby and a C-section

• Obstructive sleep apnoea – a condition where you briefly but repeatedly stop breathing while sleeping, leading to fatigue and greater risk of heart and lung problems.

Your baby is also developing in an environment altered by obesity. Your gut microbiota, for instance, is different to the gut microbiota of a person with a healthy weight. Your placenta also behaves differently, changing the supply of long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids, which are essential for foetal brain development during the last trimester.

A recent study found that these changes can adversely affect your baby’s brain development and may influence later-life behaviours.

During pregnancy and birth, your baby is at greater risk of:

• Macrosomia – having a very large baby due to being oversupplied by an altered placenta. Very large babies are harder to birth and at greater risk of shoulder dystocia or caesarean birth.

• Premature birth – babies born early are at increased risk of both short-term and long-term health problems. Conditions such as pre-eclampsia (more common in mothers with obesity) increase the risk of premature birth.

• Stillbirth.

Growing Up Afterwards

For some babies, the impacts of obesity in pregnancy continue throughout life. Babies born to mothers with obesity are more likely to:

• Be born with heart defects and neural tube defects like spina bifida

• Become obese kids – childhood obesity is twice as common in babies born to obese mothers

• Develop metabolic, cardiovascular and neurological disorders later in life.

Having A Healthy Baby When You’re Not A Healthy Weight

By now, you may be feeling quite anxious about your pregnancy. Like all good parents, you want the best for your child. And like many other people with obesity, this is an aspect of your life that you’ve struggled with for a long time and found very hard to change. It’s deeply upsetting to realise that your weight may pose risks for your baby.

We’re not trying to make you feel bad. We’re trying to help you have the information you need to support your own and your baby’s health and wellbeing.

The American College of Gynaecologists wants you to know that,

“Despite the risks of obesity, you can still have a healthy pregnancy. It takes careful management of your weight, attention to diet and exercise, regular prenatal care to monitor for complications, and special considerations for your labor and delivery.”

However, they also state that,

“Losing weight before you get pregnant is the best way to decrease the risk of problems caused by obesity.”

Dr Lockie Can Help

That’s where we come in. If you’re planning a pregnancy and are concerned about your weight, we’re here to help you.

We provide a multidisciplinary approach to weight loss, harnessing the expertise of a psychologist, dietitian, exercise physiologist, nurse and bariatric surgeon.

Book your free consultation session today.

 

Disclaimer

All information is general and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Dr Phil Lockie can consult with you to confirm if a particular treatment is right for you. Any surgical or invasive procedure carries risks.