Once the baby arrives, many new mothers want to return to their former weight quickly – just like film stars who appear in the media in bikinis just weeks after giving birth. But according to the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG), women should not put themselves under too much pressure straight away.

For years, doctors and other health-care providers have managed pregnant patients according to guidelines issued by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG).

Women who have a history of dieting or other restricted eating practices are at risk of gaining an inappropriate amount of weight during pregnancy.

Women who gain more or less than recommended amounts of weight during pregnancy are likely to increase the risk of problems for both themselves and their child, according to a new report by the RTI International-University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Evidence-based Practice Center.

The human spine evolved differently in males and females in order to alleviate back pressure from the weight of carrying a baby, according to research spearheaded at The University of Texas at Austin.

Severely obese women should lose weight during pregnancy, while obese women who are pregnant should gain less weight than currently recommended, a Saint Louis University study finds.

A slightly greater number of males than females are born worldwide every year. In recent decades, although there are still more baby boys born than girls, there has been an apparent decline in the ratio of male to female newborns in several industrialized countries, including Canada, Denmark, England, Germany, Japan and the United States.

Gaining or losing weight in between pregnancies can have major health implications for an unborn baby, warn two senior obstetricians in today’s BMJ.

Pregnant women who gain excessive or even appropriate weight, according to current guidelines, are four times more likely than women who gain inadequate weight to have a baby who becomes overweight in early childhood. These findings are from a new study at the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention of Harvard Medical School and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care and are published in the April issue of the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.