Female Obesity takes toll in maternity wards
Overweight mothers carry higher risksAs Americans have grown fatter over the last generation, inviting more heart disease, diabetes and premature deaths, all that extra weight has also become a burden in the maternity ward.
About one in five women is obese when she becomes pregnant, meaning a body mass index of at least 30, as woulda5-foot-5 woman weighing 180 pounds, according to researchers with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And growing medical evidence suggests obesity might be contributing to record-high rates of cesarean sections and leading to more birth defects and deaths for mothers and babies.
Hospitals, especially in poor neighborhoods, have been forced to adjust. They're buying longer surgical instruments, more sophisticated fetal testing machines and bigger beds. They're holding sensitivity training for staff members and counseling women about losing weight, or having bariatric surgery, before they become pregnant.
At Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, where 38 percent of women giving birth are obese, Patricia Garcia had to be admitted after she had a stroke, part of a constellation of illnesses related to her weight, including diabetes and weak kidneys. On May 5,11 weeks shy of her due date, a sonogram showed that the baby's growth was lagging, and an emergency C-section was ordered.
Studies have shown babies born to obese women are nearly three times as likely to die within the first month of birth than women of normal weight, and that obese women are almost twice as likely to have a stillbirth.
Obese women are also more likely to have high blood pressure, diabetes, anesthesia complications, hemorrhage, blood clots and strokes during pregnancy and childbirth, data shows. Very obese women, or those with a BMI of 35 or higher, are up to four times as likely to deliver their first baby by cesarean section as first-time mothers of normal weight, reported a study by the Consortium on Safe Labor of the National Institutes of Health
The above is by Anemona Hartocollis, New York Times News Service
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