According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), one in five women are obese at the time they become pregnant. This indicates a critical health issue because researchers have established a relationship between obesity and serious pregnancy-related complications, with the risks to both mother and baby increasing in proportion to the mother's weight.
Maternal Complications
Overweight women are 14 percent--and obese women are 28 to 35 percent--less likely to become pregnant or have a successful pregnancy, according to Barbara Luke, a professor at Michigan State University. Laura Riley, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Harvard Medical School, also has researched maternal complications. In a presentation of her research in 2009 to the March of Dimes, Riley stated that obese women have an increased risk for pregnancy-induced hypertension and diabetes, as well as postpartum infection. Marie Cedergren's research in the February 2004 "Obstetrics and Gynecology" found that obese women were five times more likely to develop hypertension.
Labor and Delivery
Women who are obese have a higher chance of requiring a cesarean delivery, according to an article in the September 2007 issue of "Obesity Reviews." Marie Cedergren found an increase in fetal distress and reported that neonatal deaths were three and a half times higher in obese women's pregnancies. Barbara Luke discovered that the odds of a stillbirth more than doubled and that among live births, the chance of a premature birth rose to 34 percent for obese women. Research reported in the 2009 "Journal of Perinatal Medicine" stated that obese women have a higher risk of arrested labor because the cervix stops dilating.
Birth Defects
An article in the February 2009 "Journal of the American Medical Association" reported that obese women were more than twice as likely to have a baby with spina bifida or other defects of the spinal cord. The researchers also concluded that the babies are at a higher risk for heart problems, hydrocephaly (accumulation of water in the brain), cleft palate or lip and abnormal development of the rectum.
Child
According to the CDC, babies of obese mothers face double the risk of becoming obese during childhood and of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.
Hospital Costs
Authors of an article in the October 2009 issue of "Medical Care" stated that additional research is needed, but their conclusions indicate that obesity resulted in a longer stay in the hospital as well as increased overall costs.
Recommendations
The March of Dimes recommends that women try to reach a healthy weight before becoming pregnant; however, if you are overweight at the time of pregnancy, be sure to talk to your physician about healthy weight gain during pregnancy. All women should take folic acid daily prior to conception and during early pregnancy because it reduces the risk of neural tube defects (incomplete development of the brain or spinal cord) by up to 70 percent. Folic acid is especially important for overweight women, as their babies are at a higher risk for birth defects.
