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May 2016 Moms
joceyridd
member
Pregnancy weight gain
joceyridd
member
Hey guys, I know for each pregnancy its different on how much weight each women has gained. I'm just starting 21 weeks and for th month of december it was ideal to gain a pound a week. I gained 6 pounds this month and my doctor sort of made it a big deal. So so far this pregnancy ive gained 15 pounds. Mind you i am eating healthy and not bingeing out on junk food. Just wondering how everyone else is doing with weight gain?
Re: Pregnancy weight gain
Been married since 2009.
Unicornuate Uterus (yes I menstruate glitter)
Several MCs
DD born 2013 (our miracle "you can't have babies" baby!)
And my OB's office is freaking awesome and does not tell its patients how much they weigh: the only thing they are looking for is a discrepancy (too much/too little) that would indicate issues. I love them for many reasons, but that's one of them.
How dare your doctor shame you for putting on two extra pounds in a month!? That's the epitome of absurdity--that much weight fluctuation happens on a daily basis. Even if it were ten pounds, the only thing that matters is how you feel.
Do you feel good? Yes? Then tell the OB to get bent and talk to you about shit that matters. How dare they?
On one hand, I understand where doctors are coming from because they see many women who gain a lot of weight and never loose it - only to cause health problems down the road. Last pregnancy, I remember feeling miffed when my doctor said about a 6lb gain in one month, "You won't want to do that every month." Well, actually that was my goal weight gain per month with twins because I had only recently started gaining at 18 weeks.
This pregnancy, in December, I gained 7 lbs and got back to my pre-preg weight at 19 weeks. I saw a different doctor in the practice, and she didn't mention it.
I think it also shouldn't be ignored that gaining weight is sometimes difficult for me mentally. I was a figure skater growing up. I was around many young women with eating disorders, and though I never developed one, I had to watch my figure and my weight closely. I'm sure many of you agree that while you want with all your heart to have a healthy pregnancy and baby, it can still be unnerving to watch the numbers on the scale go up.
I try to look at watching my weight like the rest of the pregnancy stats: blood pressure, urine protein, blood sugar, hemoglobin, etc.
My goal is to gain 18lbs in the next 18 weeks! But no matter what the scale says, I want to get to 37 weeks if I can!
Mama to Three Girls:
Twins born March 2014 at 26 weeks due to preterm labor
and our 37weeker born May 9th, 2016!
There are some hormonal consequences to carrying around extra fat, but they are negligible once you've hit puberty and if you're not genetically inclined to breast cancer.
The only quantifiable negative health consequences from fat come from fat stigma--i.e. people are stressed and depressed and marginalized and avoid doctors because they are fat and constantly shamed for it, and so their health declines.
And to get to the point where doctors start being unable to care for us because we don't fit their equipment (though they seem to have no trouble accommodating NFL players), we'd have to be upwards of 400lbs. The two pounds (total 20 extra pounds if you're over every month!) your doctor is complaining about is nothing, and it's absurd that she is harassing you about it.
How many times has any of us put off a major life change until we've lost those extra 5 pounds? When I was a little girl I was afraid to go swimming because I didn't want anyone to think I was fat, and I gave up gymnastics when another girl made fun of my thighs. I read just this morning about a woman who put off going to med school until she'd lost 50 lbs!
Such BS that we are all put through, as the rest of your post shows:
Even when we are *supposed* to be gaining weight, we are afraid to because society tells us we are less valuable if we are larger.
Since when is it a bad thing to take up space?
And, as I've said before, there is no way to hate yourself healthy.
Updating because this showed up in the NYTimes today:
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2013/01/03/opinion/our-imaginary-weight-problem.html?smid=fb-share&referer=http%3A%2F%2Fm.facebook.com%2F&_r=0
Mama to Three Girls:
Twins born March 2014 at 26 weeks due to preterm labor
and our 37weeker born May 9th, 2016!
First Pregnancy
Second Pregnancy
- BFP: 09/11/2015
- EDD: 05/25/2016
Baby Born04/15/2016
PGAL
She said she would become more concerned and lock it in if I fail my glucose test at 28 weeks.
Weight is just a number, and how you feel is what is most important. Growing a healthy baby is hard work!
And tell your doctor to get bent. I'd want to find a new one, but I know that's not always possible.
Any decent doctor will focus on glucose and health measures rather than on weight: if you aren't purposefully stuffing yourself to see how much food you can cram in there with baby, but merely eating to satiety, then you're going to be fine no matter how much weight you gain!
Complications are not caused by gaining an extra ten pounds, or an extra twenty, or even an extra fifty. We all do pregnancy differently, and our hormones react differently and cause our bodies to grow differently. So long as your blood glucose is looking good and all your other markers (blood pressure, proteins, etc) are looking good, you have nothing to worry about.
And how dare she? I've said this before and I know y'all are sick of me getting incensed every time, but how dare these medical professionals essentially tell us to *diet* when we are trying to get enough nutrients to give our babies strong bodies? What does she expect you to do, give up that extra glass of milk at breakfast?
If she were cautioning you against eating sugary foods, or telling you to hold off on the soda pop, then fine. But your OB's obsession with weight is intensely problematic.
I love my practice in part because they do not talk about weight at all. They weigh me and mark my charts for their records, but never once has anyone told me what I "should" be gaining. I lucked into this (I'd never have thought to ask about how they handle the weight question)--but hearing all the other horror stories (like yours) has made me so thankful that I did.
You've got enough to be stressed about without worrying about the completely irrelevant state of your body size.
I also had a major increase in weight gain over the past few weeks (approx. 4 pounds in 3 weeks, which represents a significant spike over my previous rate). I'm fairly certain it's a combination of water weight and the baby hitting a growth spurt -- the baby movements have gotten much, much bigger/stronger over the past two weeks (went from barely perceptible to me at 21w, to being strong enough for my husband to feel at 22w, to being strong enough to shift a blanket laid over my lap at 23w). I know it can't be fat since I've been tracking calories in/calories out since the beginning of this whole thing, and it's mathematically impossible for that to be fat.
Anyway, what I'm basically trying to say is (1) you're not the only one to hit a spike in weight gain at this point, and IMO that is not weird or abnormal in any way; and (2) 13 pounds does not strike me as a worrisome weight gain at this point in the process.
I would be pretty annoyed if my doctor made a big thing out of that.
I did drop 4 lbs though between that appointment and week 25 so I guess things are balancing out. I've been out walking a lot more and eating a lot more fruits and veggies. I feel like I am getting back to my regular pre-pregnancy routines and foods so I think that is helping things along.
@dshannah I am not sure I agree entirely with your post. I think they are MDs for a reason and know what they are doing. As a professor, don't you appreciate someone's area of expertise?
Yes, weight is but one metric by which to measure "health." But it shouldn't be ignored. There is actually a lot of interesting research out there about the problems stemming from doctors NOT talking to patients about weight. Doctors avoid those conversations for the same reason we do: It is uncomfortable. I don't dispute that. Anecdotally speaking, I was having back problems and I was doing one thing after another to try to get better. My physical therapist one day casually said if I lost weight it would make a big difference. It stung, I'm not going to lie. But I DID lose weight. And it's made a big difference. I wish someone said that to me earlier--as hard as it was to hear.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't think health professionals are body-shaming when talking to patients about weight. They are addressing a sensitive, difficult topic, but one that many of us need to have no matter how uncomfortable that convo may be. It's like going to the gynecologist: It's kinda awkward, no one likes it, it's uncomfortable. But it's something us ladies have to do.
DS: Born 5-17-16
I actually totally agree with you. I am also not into body shaming pregnant women, most women do gain more than the recommended 25-35 pounds and still have a healthy pregnancies and babies. Also, 13 pounds at week 24 doesn't seem excessive. Assuming you gain a pound a week for the rest of your pregnancy, you would be 31 pounds total. However, we absolutely know extra weight is linked to major pregnancy complications, and increased morbidity and mortality of both mom and baby including preeclampsia (and it's nasty cousin HELLP), GD, pre-term labor, c-sections and all the increased risks and complications of c-sections as well as numerous other issues. Weight is absolutely a metric of a healthy pregnancy. (And I'm 5'2" and gained 40 my last pregnancy so I'm no saint myself). In my professional and personal opinion, it would be irresponsible bordering on negligent not to have a discussion about healthy weight with a pregnant patient.
DS: Born 5-17-16
Its not just the ability to be on equipment which can only accommodate up to say 400lb, it's the fact that many overweight people physically CANNOT FIT inside an MRI or CT scanner. The bores are only able to be so wide, or you can't get a picture. it's not that they refuse to make them bigger, it's because the laws of physics won't allow them any bigger and still work. Yes there are large bore MRI's and CT's but they are virtually at their limit and the image quality is greatly reduced.
I have had to say no to imaging patients because the equipment simply is not able to image through the amount of tissue they have. Or if I did, the image would be so degraded, there is no diagnostic quality to the images. This is an issue across ALL medical imaging fields. And it's got nothing to do with the actual "weight" of the patient per se, but their girth. Because an NRL player is very lean they are lovely to image, and you get good diagnostic images. Someone of the same "weight" but not made of muscle, not as easy.
I'm not saying that "weight" is everything, but carrying a lot of extra fat is not healthy. There is larger and "larger". If you are too big to fit into an MRI machine, then yes I believe you are getting toward the unhealthy side of larger.
And before anyone attacks me, I'm 5'4" and almost 200lb. I do think that as a society we think too much about looks, and like anything there is a fine line between healthy and unhealthy.
So if a doctor is focused on weight rather than on those other, more accurate and telling measures of health, I'm going to question their credibility, yes. Just as all of us academics should distrust work that seems to be operating under faulty assumptions. Academics aren't always right; neither are doctors.
And just to be clear, I'm not advocating universal distrust of the medical profession, anti-vaxxer style. But the research consensus on weight (not the fringe, and excluding studies funded by the diet industry) is that it is not just a red herring, it's worse: doctors' biases against fat people and against weight gain actively prevent them from treating fat patients well.
@avidkeo: Absolutely! My point was not that being 400-lbs is not a problem for medical equipment, but that the teams of doctors and trainers who care for NFL players have access to that equipment while the majority of Americans don't. Why is it that many gurneys have a 350-lb limit when so many Americans are beyond that weight? What are they supposed to do when they get sick? We have the technology, we just choose not to use it/pay for the upgrades. And yes, those machines and tools are expensive, but so are the consequences of misdiagnosis and shoddy care.
And, finally, @JessicaB0627 -- There is, absolutely, a correlation between all those complications and obesity. But correlation does not imply causation. And often the causation goes the other way: we gain weight because of the absorbtion and regulatory issues that arise with pregnancy and its concomitant hormonal changes. For example, gestational diabetes can cause weight gain. So the thing to check for is not weight gain, but glucose tolerance. Weight gain might be a signal, but why point to that when we're getting our blood and urine checked every time we see the doctor?
When we focus on weight and not those other markers of health, what we get is this thread: countless pregnant women who are freaking out about gaining an extra few pounds when in fact they are perfectly healthy and should be trying to keep their stress levels down and should under no circumstances be trying to lose weight while they are carrying a child.
You say that some people are blinded by societal trends. While I do think that is true in some cases, I also think it can go the other way as well. I think some people are so hell-bent on NOT accepting things because they think they are a "societal trend". It's a really fine line and I think both directions can be harmful. A lot of the pregnancy culture right now tends to lean towards "natural births" and I think that can be physically and emotionally harmful to a lot of women. People are becoming ridiculously untrusting of doctors, so they believe doctors only make decisions for their own convenience, while most doctors generally care about the health of their patients and only make decisions in the patient's best interest. For instance, The Business of Being Born basically preaches to viewers that doctors are evil and don't care about your health. So instead of accepting the doctor's decisions, they are questioning them and potentially making poor decisions for their health just in spite of "societal trends". And then when women really need c-sections or inductions they are made to feel incompetent because they didn't go the "natural way". I also think the Internet makes people believe that they are more competent in making health-related decisions than their doctor because they can google whatever they want.
Basically what I'm getting at is, most doctors probably have a better reason to mention weight to their patient's than because they feel like calling someone fat that day. They WANT us to be healthy and our babies to be healthy.
You also said that Academics aren't always right. I'm not sure how aware you are of the procedures and standards that go into publishing papers and experiments in the science and medical world. These scientists and doctors spend years of their lives dedicated to a single cause. Getting funding for an experiment alone could take years. It's not a bunch of random people doing fake studies and putting in a scientific journal. They must prove their credibility over and over again, show extensive evidence in favor of their results, and then wait a decent amount of time will other professionals in their field peer-review their articles. So yeah, I do actually trust the research that's been done.
DS: Born 5-17-16
I agree that we don't need to stress out pregnant women about the amount of weight they gain, and that no woman should be made to feel they should loose weight while pregnant. I also agree at the end of the day its about being healthy. But to say that extra weight over a certain point is not unhealthy, and comparing a 400lb lay person to a 400lb NFL player is unrealistic.
Indeed, I actually worked as an editorial assistant at the top journal in my field and I witnessed how terrible things get published. Sometimes it's because the field is so small and the topic so particular that everyone knows who writes what without ever seeing the names. Sometimes it's because the majority of the editorial board is of one mind about a certain topic (don't want to reveal too much about my field but there are "orthodoxies" in every discipline that get challenged by up and coming scholars, and the old guard does not like to let them in). Sometimes excellent pieces do not get accepted because the author has not cited the reviewer (who was tangentially relevant), or for some other reason related to vanity. Which is all to say that I know what I'm talking about here:) Peer review is the best indication that something is deemed acceptable by experts, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination an infallible process.
I am not suggesting that we demonize our doctors or disregard everything they have to tell us. But (to use an academic analogy) even the best academic articles have points with which an informed and intelligent reader will (hopefully respectfully) disagree, or at least points which can stand clarification.
But when we know that doctors have been disciplined by their own governing bodies (the AMA as well as various specialty groups) for placing too much emphasis on weight, when these professional organizations and the med schools have all warned their members about not making assumptions based on weight (most notably the assumption that fat patients are "non-compliant"), it's totally worthwhile to ask ourselves if our doctors are operating under that same misapprehension.
And, to your point about gestational diabetes: As you yourself say, GD should be an occasion for a doctor to inquire after your eating habits and to monitor those. But that has nothing to do with how much you weigh! If you are eating exactly the right things and you are still gaining weight, that is not in itself cause for concern. You can be/get quite fat by eating reasonable amounts of very healthy food. Because environmental factors, hormonal factors, and biological differences in metabolisms make it that way.
Indeed, I actually worked as an editorial assistant at the top journal in my field and I witnessed how terrible things get published. Sometimes it's because the field is so small and the topic so particular that everyone knows who writes what without ever seeing the names. Sometimes it's because the majority of the editorial board is of one mind about a certain topic (don't want to reveal too much about my field but there are "orthodoxies" in every discipline that get challenged by up and coming scholars, and the old guard does not like to let them in). Sometimes excellent pieces do not get accepted because the author has not cited the reviewer (who was tangentially relevant), or for some other reason related to vanity. Which is all to say that I know what I'm talking about here:) Peer review is the best indication that something is deemed acceptable by experts, but it is not by any stretch of the imagination an infallible process.
I am not suggesting that we demonize our doctors or disregard everything they have to tell us. But (to use an academic analogy) even the best academic articles have points with which an informed and intelligent reader will (hopefully respectfully) disagree, or at least points which can stand clarification.
But when we know that doctors have been disciplined by their own governing bodies (the AMA as well as various specialty groups) for placing too much emphasis on weight, when these professional organizations and the med schools have all warned their members about not making assumptions based on weight (most notably the assumption that fat patients are "non-compliant"), it's totally worthwhile to ask ourselves if our doctors are operating under that same misapprehension.
And, to your point about gestational diabetes: As you yourself say, GD should be an occasion for a doctor to inquire after your eating habits and to monitor those. But that has nothing to do with how much you weigh! If you are eating exactly the right things and you are still gaining weight, that is not in itself cause for concern. You can be/get quite fat by eating reasonable amounts of very healthy food. Because environmental factors, hormonal factors, and biological differences in metabolisms make it that way.
QBF
Umm, hi? For your information, I come from a science background. Although I may not be an "Academic" at this point in my life, I have worked very closely with an "Academic" and seen first-hand the extensive publishing process. So I find it a little rude that you discredit my credentials without knowing them.
I also specifically asked if you were aware of the process for *scientific* and *medical* research. Although I'm sure you are an extremely important person in your discipline, I do think there are differences in how experimental information is handled in other fields. So your experience in publishing papers is somewhat irrelevant to the point I'm making.
ETA a bunch of passive aggressive smiley faces.
Been married since 2009.
Unicornuate Uterus (yes I menstruate glitter)
Several MCs
DD born 2013 (our miracle "you can't have babies" baby!)
My docs/ midwives aren't concerned and it just seems that this is the way my body handles being pregnant. I have friends who gained the same, and lost it after, as well, as they ate well and exercised. If there is no medical concern about your weight, don't worry, I say! :-)