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More women are trying a dangerous method of keeping weight off while they're pregnant, and some people think thin celebrity moms may be sparking this trend.
It's not uncommon to see pregnant women with eating disorders, but the makeup of these disorders appears to be changing.
Psychologist Wendy Hoyt said, "In the past it's been more bulimia and binge eating, not necessarily people at lower weights, but they're purging or doing something that obviously also harms the fetus."
Hoyt says lately she's seeing more expectant mothers with anorexia. Some media outlets are calling it "pregorexia," and these reports say some women are comparing themselves to celebrities who seem to lose the weight very quickly.
"They're [expecting mothers] kind of taking the approach of rather than having to lose the baby weight, they make sure they just don't gain it in the first place," Hoyt said.
She says the pregnant women with eating disorders she has worked with have been surprisingly resistant to treatment. "They really believe that somehow if they stop the symptoms, say they stop purging or they stop the severe restriction, then it should be fine. But, reality is, that's not true," she said.
What's worse, according to Hoyt, is that some of these women aren't honest with their obstetricians about their disorder. She said, "The doctor does the normal test and comes up with, ‘Well, your baby looks fine.' What does the woman with the eating disorder do? They walk their little self back to treatment and say, ‘Ha, you're wrong. My baby is fine.'"
Board Certified obstetrician John Nelson says, "There also is a condition called ‘Failure to Thrive,' or Intra-Uterine Growth Retardation where the baby simply doesn't grow as it should for reasons that perhaps are not the fault of the mother."
He says that condition may be caused by other factors, like diseases in the mother, but proper diet is a big part of keeping this from happening. He says a baby could get neurological problems because of a mother's low blood sugar. If the mother doesn't have enough calcium, the baby's bones might not form properly.
He worries about another problem among women with eating disorders: drugs. "Sometimes when people do not feel good about themselves and have eating disorders, sometimes they try to medicate themselves with other types of these substances, and it compounds the problem," he said.
Nelson says some drugs can pass directly to the baby without being filtered by the placenta.
E-mail: pnelson@ksl.com
