Obesity in Pregnant Women

choi

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Anemona Hartocollis, Growing Obesity Increases Perils of Childbearing;
Problem for Hospitals; Linked to Higher Risk of Deaths, Birth Defects and
Caesareans. Ne York Times, June 6, 2010.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/06/health/06obese.html?scp=1&sq=bmi&st=cse

Quote:

"Many experienced obstetricians complain that as Americans have grown larger
, the perception of what constitutes obesity has shifted, leading to some
complacency among doctors.

"At Ms. Garcia’s stage of pregnancy, every day in the womb was good for the
baby but bad for the mother, Dr. Minkoff said.

My comment:
(a) The report uses "water retention" to mean "edema."
(b)
(i) "In classical mythology, Scylla was a horrible six-headed monster who
lived on a rock on one side of a narrow strait. Charybdis was a whirlpool on
the other side. When ships passed close to Scylla's rock in order to avoid
Charybdis, she would seize and devour their sailors. Aeneas, Jason, and
Odysseus all had to pass between Scylla and Charybdis."
E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil, The New Dictionary of
Cultural Literacy (3rd ed, Houghton Mifflin Co.) 2002.

(ii) Scylla
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scylla
("The phrase 'between Scylla and Charybdis" (popularly reworded "between a
rock and a hard place') has come to mean being in a state where one is
between two dangers and moving away from one will cause you to be in danger
from the other.")

(c) Normal pregnancy last 40 weeks. So 11 weeks premature means birth in
week 29.
(d) The first name Shoshanna is a lily in Hebrew, not a rose (Lily of the
Valley in the Old Testament is Shoshannat Ha-Amakim in Hebrew).
(e) Despite the title and text ("obesity might be contributing to record-
high rates of Caesarean sections and leading to more birth defects and
deaths for mothers and babies"), the report never explains why maternal
obesity brings about birth defects.

However, there was a recent report:

Amy Norton, Diabetes helps explain obesity-birth defect link. Reuters, Feb.
19, 2010.
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61I48U20100219
("The new study, of nearly 42,000 women who gave birth between 1991 and 2004
, found no association between mothers' obesity and the risk of any major
birth defect. However, there was a link seen with diabetes")

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