For at least some moms-to-be, it is extra body fat — and not blood sugar levels — that may be key to their risk of having a big baby, according to a study recently published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
Experts have long known that women who have pregnancy-related diabetes are at increased risk of having a big baby. And the baby's weight is largely blamed on those mothers' high blood sugar levels. The new findings suggest that for women without gestational diabetes, it is a mom's excess pounds that really matter in her baby's birth size, said lead researcher Dr Ravi Retnakaran of Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto.