Sunday, September 21, 2008

Getting ready to get pregnant : Are you at a healthy weight?

It’s always best to try to embark on pregnancy at a healthy weight, if you can manage it. Here’s why:

Seriously underweight or overweight women don’t tend to ovulate as often as other women, something that can wreak havoc on a woman’s efforts to conceive.

Seriously underweight women are at increased risk of giving birth to a low-birth weight baby (a baby who weighs less than five pounds at birth and who may be at increased risk of experiencing some potentially serious health problems).

Seriously overweight women face a higher-than-average risk of experiencing pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes, of requiring a labor induction and/or a cesarean section, and of giving birth to extremely large babies, babies with neural tube defects, babies with heart defects, or babies who are at increased risk of developing diabetes later in life.

If you’re not an ideal weight, you might want to try to lose weight or gain weight so that you reach a healthy range before you start trying to conceive. Just don’t try to lose a ton of weight overnight: that’s not healthy for you or the baby and may throw a wrench in your baby-making plans anyway by disrupting ovulation.

Source : The Unofficial Guide to Having a Baby. Second Edition . Ann Douglas and John R. Sussman, M.D. 2004

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