Gestational Weight Gain - Its Importance To Pregnant Women And Their Children
Abstract
INTRODUCTION
The amount of weight that women gain during pregnancy has an impact on their health and the health of their babies. However, most women experience gestational weight gain in excess of the recommended amounts.
OBJECTIVES
To gain a deeper understanding of women’s perspectives regarding gestational weight gain, to examine how they experience the advice that they receive pertaining to gestational weight gain, and to explore the association between gestational weight gain and their child’s weight status.
METHODS
Three studies of different research designs were conducted. The first was a systematic review of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods studies to gain a broad understanding of pregnant women’s perceptions of gestational weight gain. This was followed by a qualitative study to explore the experience of women living in an urban area in Nova Scotia pertaining to the gestational weight gain advice that they receive. The third study used a retrospective cohort design to examine the association between gestational weight gain and offspring weight status.
RESULTS
Although pregnant women realized that gestational weight gain played a role in the health of their unborn child, which was their top priority, they were not certain about how much weight they should gain, partly because they did not report receiving much gestational weight-related advice from their prenatal care providers. Many women gained excess weight during pregnancy, which was associated with a higher body mass index trajectory observed in their children from birth to approximately five years of age.
CONCLUSION
Based on their perceptions of gestational weight gain and their experience of the gestational weight gain-related advice that they receive from their prenatal care providers, pregnant women reported that they could benefit from having more explicit and focused discussions pertaining to gestational weight gain with these providers. Such an approach could have downstream weight-related implications for their children and perhaps help to curb the childhood obesity epidemic.