Dr Adebayo Bamisebi, a Gynaecologist, has advised pregnant women to eat nutritious foods and stop laying emphasis on food as causes of their birthing big babies.
Bamisebi of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Ibeju-Lekki General Hospital, Akodo, Lagos State, gave the advice in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Monday in Lagos.
According to him, there are several symptoms that can make mothers give birth to big babies, not just diet alone.
“Lately, pregnant women have put so much emphasis on what they eat as being a contributory factor to the size of their babies.
“This has become an injury to nutrition in pregnancy and has made a number of them to reduce or change their diet habits.
“They do not know that changing their feeding habits places them at increased risk of having anaemia as well as resulting in low birth weight babies.
“But they unfortunately starve themselves of all the necessary nutrients that is required of them,’’ Bamisebi said.
The gynaecologist said there was a natural weight a baby should have in every family.
He said if a woman came from a family whose genetics were of tall heights, long bones and heavy weight, saying in their generation, the men or women would likely birth big babies especially if that baby took after their gene.
According to him, nutrition will only add a little value to it.
“So such a woman trying to starve herself will not benefit from it, it is different from those who have a history of diabetes in the family, and have not been diagnosed, they will end up with a big baby.
“If such children are recognised early, coupled with adequate treatment, their condition can be controlled eventually,” he said.
The gynaecologist said there were different interventions to a baby’s growth during pregnancy which doctor’s usually looked out for.
He said such interventions were nutritional factors or other factors usually directed to specific factors such as reducing maternal and infant mortality.
Bamisebi urged families to take care of women in pregnancy and feed them well, bearing in mind that they were serving for two or more in some cases.
He stressed that eating balanced diet in pregnancy was critical to the baby’s growth and development, urging them to get the nutrients by eating variety of food groups.
Besides, the expert said the balanced diets were things available that could be found around like fruits, vegetables and dairy products, and were less expensive.
