Combating Eating Disorders While Pregnant: Self-Care Tips

Eating disorders are extremely dangerous to your overall health and mental well-being. It can be even more devastating if you are pregnant with a child. You need to forgive yourself if this happens. It is a mental condition and is not entirely within your control. You do need to be mindful of your condition, though. There are ways to help both yourself and your unborn child.

Visit MotherhoodCommunity for more information on a healthy pregnancy. The community is ready to help you do what is best, along with getting help from a medical professional who is trained to guide patients through this.

What Can Eating Disorders Do to A Pregnancy?

When you are in the throes of this eating disorder, you are depriving yourself and your baby of important nutrients. These can lead to a number of results, including your having either a stillbirth or premature birth. Your baby could be very underweight at birth and you could wind up having trouble breastfeeding them due to the lack of nutrients.

But the medical field has been actively working to help women who have eating disorders. Guidelines were issued in March 2022, and they bring together the fields of behavioral health, obstetrics, medical care, and nutrition.

Get Personalized Care

Having an eating disorder like anorexia nervosa means that you have a distorted image of how your body looks. Any weight gain from pregnancy can cause you to go back to unhealthy eating habits or make yourself throw up. But knowing that you are pregnant can also make you want to do what you can to ensure that you beat this mental illness so that your baby can be healthy.

This is not always guaranteed to happen. The illness may be strong … and it is only when a woman might face issues of infertility that they might try to go to a medical professional to get on the road to recovery. They might have to be shown that weight gain can actually be a healthy thing for their baby.

Then there are women who might start having this issue while they are pregnant. It might be triggered by weight gain and the change in their bodies. Morning sickness could also be a trigger.

Things That Can Be Done

One popular method is for the patient to drink protein shakes. This is a way to put on calories without eating huge meals. They are also full of nutrients that are good for both the mother and their child.

A dietitian can be invaluable here – they can put together meal plans that will help the mother gain weight while also ensuring that the baby is getting what they need too.

There is no one-size fits all plan, though. Each woman is unique in their situation and getting a customized plan is important. That means having thorough conversations and medical tests. By doing that, they are ensuring that they will be able to create something that is perfect for you and you alone.

Other Things To Know

You can have an eating disorder and still get pregnant. While anorexia can affect your fertility, it doesn’t mean that you have no chance of having a baby. Your doctor will work with you to try to get you up to 22% body fat so that you have the best odds of being able to conceive your baby and carry it to term.

There are things that can trigger your eating disorder while you are pregnant and you need to be aware of them. Weight gain is the main one. You are fighting your distorted body image and gaining weight is not something you want to see. You’re going to be weighed many times over the course of your pregnancy – just ask your provider to not tell you what those numbers are. Don’t look at your medical records a lot, either.

Morning sickness might get you back in the habit of purging. Women who are pregnant may get gestational diabetes. Don’t try to count calories in that case – talk to your doctor.

Ultimately, you need to know that you are not alone. Over 10 million women have had this mental illness. That is stressful enough. Add the rigors of pregnancy and it is something that can have life-altering effects on you. You need to have regular doctor appointments and maybe even go in for inpatient treatment to help you continue along a healthy path for your pregnancy. 

Call or text (800) 931-2237 or visit nationaleatingdisoders.org  if you or someone you know needs help combatting this issue.

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