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 Excessive Weight Gain During Pregnancy Impairs Breast-Feeding Ability
WESTPORT, CT (Reuters Health) Apr 06 - Women who begin pregnancy at normal
weights but gain more than 35 pounds during the pregnancy have an increased
risk of having difficulty initiating breast-feeding, researchers reported
this week at the Experimental Biology 2001 meeting in Orlando. Dr. Kathleen
Rasmussen, of Cornell University, and colleagues studied the records of 2494
white women with singleton births during a 9-year period. The researchers
found that almost half of the women who were normal weight before pregnancy
gained more than the 24- to 35-lb weight gain recommended by the Institute of
Medicine during pregnancy. The Institute recommends that obese women gain
less than 24 pounds. In an interview with Reuters Health, Dr. Rasmussen said
that excess weight gain made the women "74% more likely to be unsuccessful
when attempting to breast-feed." The women in the study all delivered their
infants at Mary Imogene Bassett Hospital, in Cooperstown, New York, she said.
Dr. Rasmussen believes that there are several possible explanations for the
association between weight gain and difficulty breast-feeding. First, she
said that the areola is often much larger when a woman is obese and "it may
be more difficult for the infant to compress adequately to get a good milk
supply," she said. Additionally, an obese woman may have difficulty finding a
comfortable position for nursing or, because of psychosocial factors, may be
more uncomfortable continuing breast-feeding. "These women are likely to need
more support to successfully breast-feed," she said. Another difficulty may
be biological. Normal-weight women get progesterone from the placenta, she
said. After delivery that source is gone and that signals the body to start
producing milk. However, fat is also a source for progesterone, so obese
women continue to produce progesterone after the placenta is removed. "So it
can take them longer to develop a milk supply," Dr. Rasmussen said. She added
that the study findings indicate the need for additional support and
education of obese women so that they "can successfully breast-feed their
children."

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