Pregnancy provides you with the golden opportunity to make changes regarding your lifestyle, with immediate and long-term effects for you and your family. This is especially important, if your Body Mass Index (BMI) has been identified as significantly raised (more than 30 kg/m).
Obesity has been recognised as a risk factor for developing complications in pregnancy and childbirth (CEMACH, 2007), such as:
For the mother:
For the baby:
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prematurity;
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big babies;
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difficulties in delivering the baby's shoulders;
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subsequent child obesity;
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low breastfeeding rates / feeding problems;
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stillbirths etc.
Weight gain in pregnancy could be a sensitive issue for a lot of women. Pre-pregnancy weight loss usually is the optimal aim. However, this is not advisable, whilst being pregnant.
Instead, it will be more realistic to attempt to maintain your current weight or not to gain excessive weight, through dietary and healthy lifestyle changes.
Your booking midwife will refer you to the Cedar clinic if your BMI is more than 35 kg/m.
Ideally, you will be seen at the clinic between 12 and 16 weeks by a team of an obstetric doctor, a physician and a midwife.
The aim of this pioneering clinic is to provide support, advice and individualised care, with dignity and respect for your wishes, and to achieve a good outcome for you and your baby.
At your first appointment with the Cedar team, a detailed history of your medical and personal history will be taken and we will give advice in regards to your nutrition and physical activities.
We will do a body composition analysis with an "In Body 720" Analyser. You will also have an individualised care plan.
We will give you various leaflets regarding nutrition, exercising and feeding your baby. Breastfeeding is the optimal way of infant feeding and we will refer you to be trained how to express and store your milk at the end of your pregnancy (Colostrum Harvesting clinic).
You will have extra scans to monitor the baby's growth; an anaesthetic appointment to check how suitable it would be for you to have an epidural, spinal anaesthetics or general anaesthesia, if needed (rarely).
A test to diagnose diabetes will be booked for you between 26 and 30 weeks (Glucose Tolerance Test - GTT) and a leaflet with detailed information will be sent to you by the pathology department.
The team, who runs this service, is also leading significant research projects about being overweight and pregnant. These studies will provide us with important knowledge about prevention and treatment of problems in pregnant women with raised BMI and about optimal assessment of who is overweight or obese, with subsequent prediction of who is more at risk of complications.
