Background – Maternal nutrition plays a major role in a healthy outcome for pregnancy. Increasing numbers of women have experienced an eating disorder and recovered. Does this influence weight gain and nutrition in pregnancy?
Objective – To explore how some women recover from an eating disorder (ED) and manage the experience of pregnancy and mothering specifically weight gain and the nutritional needs of themselves and their child.
Design – Two groups of women were studied, the ED group (10) and the reference group (8) women of comparable body mass who said they had never had an ED. This was a qualitative research study which used Grounded Theory as the research method.
Outcomes – Recovery involved adopting more constructive coping strategies (exercise) to “measure up”. Their pregnancies were characterised by predominantly high weight gains( 6/10 women gained 18-30 kgs i.e. more than the upper recommended limit for women with a low BMI however only 3 of those 6 women were in the low prepregnancy BMI range, 2/10 women gained in the normal weight range and 2/10 gained less than recommended), above normal infant birth weights (8/10 babies weighed >3300gms and none were in the low birth weight range and successful breastfeeding(all women breastfed for a minimum of 4 months and 7/10 breastfed for 6months or longer). None of the 10 women reported they received any personalised nutritional information from their health professional during their pregnancies .
Conclusions – ED recovered women are characterised by having a need to “measure up” throughout their lives. They are highly motivated to have healthy pregnancies and can be particularly receptive to nutritional guidance at this time.