Minimizing Gestational Weight Gain Appears to Be Safe for People with Obesity

A 2009 guideline from the Institute of Medicine (IOM; renamed National Academy of Medicine in 2015) recommends gestational weight gain of 5 to 9.1 kg for pregnant people with obesity (i.e., body-mass index [BMI], ≥30 kg/m²). The safety of less gestational weight gain is unknown. Researchers identified ≈16,000 singleton pregnancies affected by obesity (measured before 14 weeks' gestation) in a Swedish population-based dataset to study the association between total pregnancy weight gain and a composite of neonatal and maternal outcomes. The outcomes, which were weighted for severity, included stillbirth, infant death, large or small for gestational age at birth, preterm birth, unplanned caesarean delivery, gestational diabetes, preeclampsia, …