Pregnant mothers often relish the opportunity to forget about their weight for a while. In a world where the pressure on women to be slim often leads them yoyo-ing from diet to diet, the chance for a good excuse to forget about all that and tuck into an extra cream cake can be irresistible. The old saying that pregnant women are ‘eating for two’ is often trotted out, but new research has shown that it may not be true, and may in fact be detrimental to maternal wellbeing as it encourages them to put on far more weight than is necessary.
Studies show that a woman of a healthy weight should only put on between 11 and 16kg during pregnancy with one child. Many women, however, gain a great deal more than this, and a culture of encouraging women to believe they have to eat in excess is being blamed.
A study has been conducted involving three different countries, and has found that 74 percent of women gain more weight than is recommended during their first pregnancy.
In this same study, just 17 percent of women were found to have a normal weight gain (with the remaining minority having a lower than expected gain).
In the group of women who had excessive weight gain, there was an increased rate of caesarean section births, as well as a much higher rate of babies being born with a high birth weight.
Wellness of the mother can also be affected by excessive weight gain, as they run the risk of developing gestational diabetes (pregnancy-related diabetes) or other disorders such as high blood pressure and pre-eclampsia, which can, in rare cases, be fatal.
Pregnancy diabetes can also lead to type 2 diabetes in later life. Excess weight gained during pregnancy can also be hard to lose once the baby is born, leading to other health complications in later life. Big babies are also at a greater risk of being overweight in their lives too, leading to health complications.
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