Losing Weight While Pregnant Morbidly Obese

A recent study conducted by The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston shows that severely obese women who maintained or lost weight during pregnancy had healthier babies and lower health care costs.

“The OB-GYN department is justifiably proud of this result, which required a lot of close attention to the mothers’ prenatal care, ” said Dr. David McCormick, clinical professor of pediatrics in the Division of General Academic Pediatrics at UTMB. “We were quite surprised by the relatively large proportion of mothers who responded to the educational efforts. We were especially happy to see the benefits on pregnancy-related costs and the favorable infant health outcomes.”

The study, set to be published in the journal Clinical Obesity, compared 82 severely obese pregnant women with 85 healthy weight women. The obese mothers experienced more medical problems during pregnancy, higher medical costs and longer lengths of hospital stay compared to non-obese women. Twenty-six percent of the obese mothers maintained or lost weight during pregnancy and experienced lower medical costs and gave birth to healthier infants.

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Neonatal intensive care consumed 78 percent of total hospital costs for infants of the obese women who gained weight, but only 48 percent of costs for infants of obese women who maintained or lost weight.

Total medical charges – including hospital and physician – were 37 percent higher for labor and delivery care for obese mothers and their infant compared to non-obese mothers and their baby.

The findings are important, McCormick said, because 34 percent of reproductive-aged women living in the U.S. are obese. Of these, nearly 19 percent are morbidly obese. The study found that, compared with women whose body mass index was less than 25, women with severe obesity were also more prone to preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, insulin use, cesarean section and prolonged hospitalization.

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Compared with infants of normal-weight mothers, infants of obese mothers experienced more complications such as stillbirth, prematurity, excessively large size and neonatal trauma.

Infants of the one-quarter of women with severe obesity who maintained or lost weight during pregnancy were less likely to suffer the adverse consequences of abnormal birth weight. No premature infants or overweight babies were born in this group.

Caregivers in the prenatal clinics advised the mothers on nutrition and exercise, and provided them with written educational materials. Study authors suggest that more research will be needed to fully assess the health risks for infants when an obese woman maintains or loses weight during pregnancy.

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Researchers obtained data for the study by reviewing the medical records of 2215 women who delivered at UTMB from June through December 2009.

This study was written by Dr. Maria Caldas, Dr. Justin Serrette, Dr. Sunil Jain, and Dr. David McCormick of UTMB’s Department of Pediatrics, and Michel Makhlouf and Gayle Olson of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. The study, “Maternal obesity: financial implications of weight management” has been published in the journal, Clinical Obesity. Clinical Obesity can be accessed at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1758-8111.I don't want to scare you but the truth is that being obese during pregnancy can have serious effects on your health as well as your baby’s. Obesity during pregnancy is linked to a number of pregnancy complications like preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, cesarean birth or worse, miscarriage and stillbirth.

Join me in this episode as I talk about obesity and how it affects your pregnancy. I’m going to help you understand the risk of obesity and how your weight is affecting your fertility. Find out what defines an “obese pregnant woman” and what you can do to have a healthy pregnancy and childbirth.

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Ep 40: The Truth About Obesity And Pregnancy

I want this podcast to be more than a one sided conversation. Join me on Instagram where we can connect outside of the show! Through my posts, videos, and stories, you'll get even more helpful tips to ensure you have a beautiful pregnancy and birth. You can find me on Instagram @. I'll see you there!

Speaker 2: Welcome to the All About Pregnancy and Birth Podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Nicole Calloway Rankins, a board certified ob gyn physician, certified integrative health coach and creator of The Birth Preparation Course, an online childbirth education course that will leave you feeling knowledgeable, prepared, confident, and empowered going into your birth. Quick note, this podcast is for educational purposes only and it's not a substitute for medical advice. See the full disclaimer at www.ncrcoaching.com/disclaimer.

Speaker 1: Hello, welcome to another episode of the podcast. This is episode number 40 and I'm so glad you are here with me today. On today's episode of the podcast I am talking about how obesity affects pregnancy, and this idea actually came from one of my Instagram followers. Now I know that weight in general can be a really sensitive topic, but it's something that we need to discuss, because it's important and it affects quite a few women during their pregnancies. So in today's episode you're going to learn what exactly obesity is, the definition, how common it is for reproductive age women, the effects that obesity has on pregnancy, also how it affects babies, and then how your pregnancy care changes if you're obese. Now I know that some of the information today may feel like a lot, it may feel a little bit overwhelming at times, maybe even a little bit depressing, but we have to understand the facts about how obesity affects pregnancy, because without those facts, you don't have the information you need to have your very best pregnancy and birth. So we are going to tackle all of that information today.

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: All right, now before we get into the episode, a quick listener shout out, this is to NicoleANC. And she left me this review in Apple podcasts. The title of it is, I finally found it. And it says I wanted to take advantage of my commuting time each day with a podcast that will prepare me for birth and baby as well as helpful tips through pregnancy. Until I came across this, I found most podcasts in this subject area to be way too specific on obscure topics or just too much fluff. This one is exactly (in all caps), exactly what I was looking for. Dr Rankins breaks it all down so well and I find all the episodes relevant to what I want to learn about. Well thank you so much NicoleANC. I am so glad that I can help you take advantage of your commuting time and there are plenty more episodes to come so you'll have lots of stuff to listen to on your commute.

Speaker 1: Also, let me take a moment to remind you about my free live online class, How to Make a Birth Plan That Works. This is a great class to give you a step by step process on how to make a birth plan that works for you and your birth. Now, due to my work schedule, I have to cut back on how many times I can offer the class over the next couple of months. So if you're interested, then definitely go ahead and sign up. It's www.ncrcoaching.com/register to sign up and I'll put that link in the show notes. You can be at any point in your pregnancy to take the class, so don't feel like you have to wait. And if you can't make the time of the class, go ahead and register anyway and I will send you the replay video. So that's www.ncrcoaching.com/register and if you're looking for childbirth education, which I strongly encourage that everyone does, then the birth plan class is a great way to get a feel for my online childbirth education class, The Birth Preparation Course. And The Birth Preparation Course is my lovely program, amazing program that gives you comprehensive childbirth education. So you are knowledgeable, prepared, confident and empowered to have the birth you want. You can learn all the details about the birth preparation course at www.ncrcoaching.com/enroll and that link is in the show notes as well.

: All right, so let's get into today's episode. And the first thing we're going

Pregnancy And Obesity