Nine bags of rice. One baby hippo. A
14-year-old boy. All these weigh about 45kg imagine that in your pregnant body.
Jamie Kaur doesn’t need to. She actually put on that much weight during her
pregnancy 10 years ago.
“After my terrible morning sickness
subsided during the second trimester, I was giving in to every hunger pang and
eating with a vengeance. Think five to six full meals a day, with three full
servings each time,” says the 35-year-old, who has one child.
By the eight month of her pregnancy, Jamie
nearly doubled her original weight of 55kg, tipping the scales at 100kg.
Recounting a particularly funny incident, she says candidly: “One of my
friends, who had not seen me for a while, had a huge shock when she saw me
during the later part of my pregnancy. She caught a glimpse of me from afar and
shouted across the room: “Oh, my god, what happened to you?”
Similarly, Melissa Klyne, 38, ate like
crazy after grappling with severe morning sickness during the first two
trimesters of her pregnancy. She literally ate for two.
“When I could finally stomach food
properly, I was downing a one-litre carton of chocolate milk every day and
chomping down two plates of rice each meal,” says the customer service trainer,
who has a 12-year-old-son.
Her svelte 58kg figure ballooned to a hefty
83kg, which made simple actions like getting out of the car difficult. “My
husband had to pull me out of the seat because I couldn’t get out on my own.
Everyone thought I was pregnant with twins,” she says.
Bloom, not balloon
In
the first 20 weeks, the gain is only 2kg to 3kg.
As your baby grows and your body takes on a
curvier and more voluptuous silhouette, gaining extra kilos is a given during
pregnancy. Even so, doctors say it’s no excuse to binge. Eating for two during
pregnancy is an outdated notion, says obstetrician and gynaecologist Dr
Christopher Ng of GynaeMD Women’s and Rejuvenation Clinic.
“You should eat as per normal. It’s not
the amount of food but the quality that matters,” he says.
The recommended weight gain during
pregnancy is 12kg to 16kg (see How those Kilos Add Up), says Dr Tan Wei Ching,
a senior consultant at Singapore General Hospital’s (SGH) Department of
Obstetrics and Gynaecology. But if you’re overweight to begin with, you should
put on less weight (and vice versa if you’re underweight).
Dr Ng says that, on average, most women put
on the bulk of the weight in the second half of the pregnancy. In the first 20
weeks, the gain is only 2kg to 3kg.
For Jamie and Melissa, pregnancy was a time
to let loose. It didn’t help that their families kept encouraging them to eat
more for Baby’s sake.
“My Eurasian mum was such a good cook, and
the baby’s father was encouraging me to eat more, too. He didn’t mind my weight
because he felt it was good for the baby. But that obviously is not true,” says
Jamie,
Melissa adds: “Thanks to my really bad bout
of morning sickness earlier on, everyone felt so sort for me. When I could eat,
nobody stopped me.”
Too much of a good thing
Eating
more during pregnancy does not necessarily mean a healthier baby
Eating more during pregnancy does not
necessarily mean a healthier baby, says SGH’s Dr Tan. “On the contrary, eating
too much refined sugar and processed food is going to put the pregnant mother
at risk of conditions like hypertension. Expecting mothers with these
conditions may go into early delivery and, hence, give birth to a premature and
less healthy baby,” she explains.
Gaining too much weight during pregnancy
puts you at a higher risk of a host of complications, ranging from miscarriage
and gestational diabetes to preeclampsia, says Dr Ng. If left untreated, the
latter condition can potentially endanger the lives of both mother and baby.
That was what happened to Jamie during Week
37 of her pregnancy. She developed preeclampsia and had to be hospitalized for
a week. Her daughter was born after that, weighing a feather-light 2.8kg at
birth,
“Thinking back about how light the baby
weighed and how heavy I was, I feel terrible. Thankfully, nothing bad happened
to her,” says Jamie.
She also recalls how all that extra kilos
took a toll on her knees, which could creak under her hefty frame. Shopping
trips became a torture, as she had to sit down every five minutes to rest her
painful knees. “I stayed at home most of the time because my knees would hurt
whenever I walked,” she says.
Physically, excess weight can worsen the
discomfort you experience during pregnancy, including backaches, leg pain, achy
joints, varicose veins, heartburns and haemorrhoids, explains Dr Tan.
Weight a minute
“There’s
no need to deny yourself the occasionally treat, but do choose wisely. Eat in
moderation and fill up on healthy foods. Exercise can also help”
Both doctors say the most common-sense
approach to keeping pregnancy weight gain in check is to eat sensibly. “There’s
no need to deny yourself the occasionally treat, but do choose wisely. Eat in
moderation and fill up on healthy foods. Exercise can also help,” says Dr Tan.
While she doesn’t encourage strenuous
exercise during the last trimester, she says light- to moderate- intensity ones
such as brisk walking, swimming, lifting of light weights and even yoga are
safe for expecting mums.
Sick and tired of dressing up only in
oversized “auntie” nightgowns, Jamie went on a massive weight loss programme
half a year after she delivered her baby. For almost a year, she denied herself
chocolates and sweet treats, and worked out every day. Along the way, she also
found a new career in the fitness industry.
Today, Jamie is back to her original svelte
size. So has Melissa, who exercised to shave off most of the excess weight she
piled on during her pregnancy. All that remains are the unsightly stretch
marks.
“I don’t think I can ever get rid of
them,” says Jamie. “Even though my skin has become more taut after I started
working out, the stretch marks are still all over my tummy, belly and legs.
They are a reminder of how fat I had been. I definitely don’t want to ever to
back tot hat size again.”
