How Does Obesity Affect Pregnancy

It is usual for a woman to acquire weight over the course of her pregnancy. Pregnant moms get obese even after having given birth. This mode of acquiring obesity is not a healthy sign for it is a medical condition. In the following there is a detailed account on how obesity can pose certain threats to the health of mother and baby:

Complications for mothers:

The health of a woman turns more vulnerable by the time she gets pregnant, particularly if she is obese as well. Below is a detailed account of numerous health conditions attributed with pregnancy of obese moms:

• Postpartum Infection

Postpartum infection is contracted by women undergoing cesarean section. Result is vulnerability to a hard postpartum recovery.

• Cesarean Section

In this condition obesity makes it difficult for the normal delivery to occur. Moreover, it may pose problems such as positioning, maintaining airways and applying spinal anesthetic in addition to impeding labor. Consequently, women have to endure cesarean delivery.

• Preeclampsia

Also called ‘toxemia’ — pregnancy-induced hypertension — diagnosed by traces of protein in the urine, fluid retention during the second half of the pregnancy and blood pressure. The condition is encountered after the 20th week of gestation and during the first pregnancy of moms. The condition is rare but if contracted, it poses a serious obesity problem and can obstruct blood flow to the placenta harming the unborn child.

• Gestational Diabetes

This problem is characterized by a high blood sugar condition that holds when the body is unable to decompose sugar properly because of the deficiency of insulin. This means that your food is not going to be digested properly. If the condition prevails for quite some time, its effects can be told over the health of the baby also; the baby will turn obese in utero culminating into a complicated childbirth.

Embryonic intricacies:

It is not only the mother that faces complexities owing to an obese pregnancy, the baby is also severely influenced by mother obesity. In the following are a couple of child health issues attributed with obese motherhood.

• Baby Obesity

Babies of obesity stricken mothers are very much susceptible to become obese progressively with their growth.

• Macrosoma

This occurs when the baby gains too much weight during embryonic stages making its delivery and labor difficult as it can’t enter and exit the birth canal. Oft-times some babies get their shoulders injured during delivery, a condition referred to as ‘shoulder dystonia’.

• Neural Tube Defects

During its development, a baby is exposed to contracting perilous neural tube defects. Like spina bifida and anencephaly, the condition is some times characterized by low levels of folic acid witnessed in the first trimester. This could easily be scanned through ultrasound but the problem remains that obese women also make poor ultrasounds resulting in late detection of this complication in fetus.

Women having pregnancy have shown remarkable tendency to gaining weight, which is at times quite fatal for their health. Prevention of excessive obesity is a prerequisite for any would be mother so that she emerges hale and healthy by the time of delivery as well!