Feeling good about your Plus Sized Pregnancy.
Because I think it’s important for other moms to know that you’re not a bad mom and you won’t be a bad mom just because you’re plus-size. Here’s some helpful information about being plus sized and pregnant from the Babycenter website. (They also have a plus sized and pregnant bulletin board (message board) which is a great place for ideas and support!)
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Most plus-size women have completely normal pregnancies and normal babies. We’re currently making a lot of fuss about maternal size. This only magnifies the risks and scares women,” says Cornelia van der Ziel, a clinical instructor in obstetrics at Harvard Medical School and an oby-gyn in private practice.
“The odds are, plus-size women are going to have healthy pregnancies,” says Brette McWhorter Sember, a mom of two and coauthor of Your Plus-Size Pregnancy. “The odds often sound like they’re against plus-size women, but the truth is that you’re most likely to have a perfectly healthy pregnancy, nothing wrong with the baby, and a wonderful delivery. It doesn’t have to be that big of a deal.”
Books For the Plus Sized Pregnant woman
General pregnancy
Big, Beautiful, and Pregnant: Expert Advice and Comforting Wisdom for the Expecting Plus-Size Woman, by Cornelia van der Ziel and Jacqueline Tourville
Your Plus-Size Pregnancy: The Ultimate Guide for the Full-Figured Expectant Mom, by Brette McWhorter Sember and Bruce D. Rodgers Exercise
Exercise DVDs for plus-size women by Kelly Bliss
Great Shape: The First Fitness Guide for Large Women, by Pat Lyons and Debby Burgard
Megayoga, by Megan Garcia
Real Fitness for Real Women: A Unique Workout Program for the Plus-Size Woman, by Rochelle Rice
Yoga: Just My Size With Megan Garcia (DVD) And here’s some information on diet and nutrition:
Diet and Nutrition
Pregnancy’s an important time to focus on eating well. You need to make sure your baby’s getting enough nutrients to grow — and that you’re getting enough nutritional support to grow a baby!
This isn’t the time to diet or cut back on calories. But it’s a great time to take a close look at how and what you eat and to figure out what’s best for you and your baby. And to focus on making healthy food choices.
Top tips for eating well-
• Eat a good breakfast. Here’s where you set the stage for your day. A breakfast with protein, fat, carbohydrates, and fiber will make you feel better the rest of the day.
• Eat small meals with snacks in between, rather than three bigger meals.
• Include protein in every meal and snack, and avoid foods with refined sugar or processed white flour. This helps your blood sugar levels stabilize and keeps hunger at bay.
• Work fruits and veggies into your meals in creative ways: Toss assorted chopped vegetables into your breakfast eggs, or sprinkle shredded zucchini or carrots into low-fat quick breads. Apple and cucumber slices make great additions to sandwiches. Add apple chunks, dried cranberries or currants, or chopped dried apricots to salads.
• Focus on folate: Plus-size women, according to a study, may need more folic acid than smaller women, so it’s essential to take a daily prenatal vitamin with 1 milligram of folic acid both before and during pregnancy. • Choose unsaturated good fats (olive, canola, peanut oils) over saturated and hydrogenated bad fats (animal fats, palm oil, margarine).
If you need support to get and stay on track, a nutritionist can help redesign your ways of eating to be healthier and more fulfilling for both you and your baby, without making you feel deprived. You can find a nutritionist (also called a dietitian) on the American Dietetic Association website — just click on Find a Nutrition Professional.
If you have problems with emotional and/or compulsive overeating, you’re not alone — and you’ll find good company and lots of support and recovery help at a local Overeaters Anonymous or Food Addicts Anonymous meeting.
Before making any changes to your regular food routine, run them by your healthcare provider to make sure they’re safe for your baby.
And tips for finding a size-friendly healthcare provider:
The importance of finding the right healthcare provider
Pregnancy creates its fair share of stress around tests, vitamins, food restrictions, and the rest, but get the right healthcare provider, and your stress level may decrease, says Sember. A good provider will note your weight during pregnancy and occasionally talk about it — it’s necessary as your baby grows. And a good provider can monitor your risk factors, based on family and personal history, but without harping on weight, she adds.
Finding the right doctor is key during pregnancy, says Sujatha Reddy, an ob-gyn in Atlanta. “A more relaxed approach is best for most women. If there are problems, you want the doctor to help, but you don’t want to constantly be worrying that you’ve gained one too many pounds,” she says.
“The line I always use is, ‘This is not about you looking like Britney Spears. It’s about being healthy,’” says Reddy. “There’s no reason to stay with a doctor you don’t connect with. You form a relationship with a doctor just like you do with anyone else.”
How to find a healthcare provider you like
Do you need help finding a great doctor? Follow these tips :• Stick together. Ask other plus-size moms in your area for recommendations for size-friendly obstetricians. They’ll have the inside line on practices that offer great care for plus-size moms — and those that don’t.
• Gauge experience. Before you make an appointment at a new practice, ask whether the doctor and nursing staff have experience working with plus-size moms. If the doctor has never done, say, a c-section on a plus-size mom, you don’t want to be his first.
• Case the joint. Does the practice have gowns large enough to fit you and large-size blood pressure cuffs? That’s a sign of a practice that’s welcoming to plus-size women.
• Trust your gut. Watch how the doctor and his staff talk to you. Do they use a condescending tone? Knowing that your doctor will want to talk to you about weight as your baby grows, see if the way he does it is sensitive and nonjudgmental.
• Consider a midwife. Many plus-size women have good experiences with midwives who don’t instantly see their weight as a medical problem. “I felt defective in my doctor’s office, like my pregnancy was a ticking time bomb, but my midwife never made a fuss about my weight — she trusted my body to be able to do what it’s designed for,” says Emily James, an architect and mother of two in Bergen, New Jersey.
How to leave a healthcare provider you don’t like
If you decide your doctor doesn’t measure up, you can always leave. Consider these tips from Sember and moms who’ve made the switch:• Get a second opinion. Before you notify your doctor that you’re leaving, Sember recommends you tell your insurance company you need a second opinion and then start auditioning different doctors. That way, there’s never a gap in your care.
• Time it right. Get prenatal care early, so that if you decide to make a change, you can do it before the end of the first trimester, notes Sember. After that, some doctors will be hesitant to take you.
• Plan your exit based on comfort level. The way you leave the practice depends on what you feel comfortable doing. Lehman told the nurse-practitioner in her second pregnancy to say, “I don’t think this is going to work out.” You can also secure a new ob-gyn and have your records transferred without any explanation. Some women want their former doctor to know why they’re leaving and so write a letter or tell their doctor directly. Do what feels right for you.
• Remember: You don’t have to explain. You don’t need your ob-gyn’s permission, either. You also don’t have to tell your new doctor why you’re changing. Simply follow the above advice to find a doctor who fits your criteria. Then have a great pregnancy!
-Yes, being overweight and pregnant can put you a higher risk for some issues such as gestational diabetes and preeclampsia, but skinny and ‘healthy weight’ women get those too -no matter what your size some people will have complications and others a completely problem free pregnancy. If you are pregnant and overweight your weight truly doesn’t have to be that big of a deal — and it is possible to have a healthy pregnancy and healthy baby.
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in the new year, those of us starting for the first time 
, and those of us who just need a little structure and motivation to jumpstart the new year 
. The challenge will run for about a month and will end on Feb 14th, Valentine’s Day, so set yourself a reasonable, attainable weight loss goal to get to by that day. It’s that easy! We will have Weekly Threads (located in theWeight loss Challenge forum), starting every Monday (ok this week I started one today, but in the future I’ll change them on Monday) until the end of the challenge… I’m going to do it this way so we don’t have to go through so many pages of posts.
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