Featuring Dr. Nardia Strydom, MD
Pregnancy and Body Mass Index
Duration: 1 minute, 12 seconds

Your pre-pregnancy BMI is the - your BMI - is your body mass index and so it's really your weight-height ratio that you start your pregnancy with.

And that's important because we know that if you have a high BMI when you start off your pregnancy, then you're at an increased risk for complications in pregnancy.

So one of the things we look at is that a BMI of between 18.5 and 25 is considered normal, and that if you're higher than that there are varying ranges of being overwight and obese.

And people always wonder about how much weight they should gain, so that if your BMI is normal then you would gain somewhere between 10 to 20 kilograms in a pregnancy, or half a kilogram a week.

But if you start off being obese, and your BMI is over 30 then we only recommend that you should gain between five and ten kilograms in your whole pregnancy, or just .2 kilograms or half a pound a week.

So if you have any questions about that and wanting to know where you are you could either speak to your doctor or your midwife or contact a nutritionist who can help you figure out what your BMI is and where you should be going with your weight in pregnancy.

Presenter: Dr. Nardia Strydom, Family Doctor, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Family Doctor