I am sure that by now, many of you have read about the Siberian woman who gave birth to a 17# baby girl in Russia. Amazingly, this is not a record breaker, but still, the weight of this baby at birth is greater than most twins combined! Unfortunately, when it comes to babies, bigger is not necessarily better. The question is really, why ARE some babies so big?

There are many possible causes for big babies. Definitely, Mom's size has something to do with it as does the amount of weight that she gains during pregnancy. When women use pregnancy as a chance to "eat for two", they forget that the # 2 person starts out smaller than a grain of rice, and even at birth does not require the kind of caloric load that an adult does. In general, women who start out obese have to be particularly careful not to gain much weight, but even the normal weight woman who puts on 40, 50 or even 60 pounds durng her pregnancy is asking for trouble.

Perhaps one of the most important reasons that women have big babies is that they develop what is known as "gestational diabetes". This is an inability to handle sugars because the body doesn't respond to insulin in the usual way. While these women continue to make insulin (unlike a childhood diabetic for example), their bodies become resistant to it. So what happens? Their sugar levels go up in their blood stream and that passes directly through to the baby. You only have to visualize a pipeline of coca cola going intervenously to a 3# fetus, 24/7, to get a sense of what can happen! These babies get big! They also have other problems - they are often born by cesarean, or if born vaginally, may be more likely to suffer birth trauma. Furthermore, because they have been so used to a high sugar load while in the womb, their own bodies are making whopping amounts of insulin to try to control all that "sweetness". After birth, that insulin pump doesn't slow down right away and they rapidly develop dangerously low sugars because the umbilical cord (the "pipeline" from Mom) has been cut.

Today in the US, most women who receive prenatal care get tested at least once during their pregnancy for gestational diabetes. This usually involves drinking something almost sickeningly sweet and then getting your blood drawn an hour or two later. For women who have a history of big babies (over 8.5 to 9#), this test is done right at the beginning of the pregnancy - for everyone else it is done somewhere around 6 to 7 months. As with this woman from Siberia, big babies predict big babies, and since all of her 11(!) other children weighed over 11 pounds, it is probable that she has had gestational diabetes with each and every pregnancy. If she had been diagnosed, she might have been able to control it with diet, but in some cases, insulin is required as well.

Does gestational diabetes go away after the pregnancy is over? Yes and no. It does resolve, but women who have been gestational diabetics need lifetime follow-up because they are at much higher risk for developing full blown diabetes later in life. This is compounded, in the US, by the fact that more women are becoming overweight and obese (over 50% of us), and this is also a risk factor for adult onset diabetes. And unfortunately, obese babies often grow into obese children, who grow into even more obese adults, and it becomes a vicious and unhealthy cycle.

Just remember, all things in moderation. Bigger is not better - as most any woman who has ever been pregnant can confirm! For more information on diabetes and diabetes prevention, you can go to the American Diabetes Association website or to the Revolution Health blogs on diabetes and gestational diabetes.

Stay healthy, stay informed

OWWWWWWWWWWW

Thanks for the info....

WOW! and OWWWWWW!!!!

Great info though.