Does the amount a pregnant women eats affect her babies size, or likeliness to be chubby?
I appreciate your efficiency by asking everything in one question! Ok, here goes…. Yes, what a woman eats can affect the size of her newborn, particularly if she develops gestational diabetes. The higher her blood sugar, the larger her baby will be. Also, an inadequate diet can result in a low birth weight baby, which is not a good thing. But don’t get too scared— there is a wide range of healthy weights for a baby and a woman’s body is very good at doing everything it can to produce the healthiest baby. However, there is controversy about whether fetal nutrition has anything to do with body size/shape later in childhood. That has more to do with lifestyle. One thing that is pretty well proven is that children who are breastfed, on demand (meaning they choose to feed when they are hungry, and they stop when they are done) tend to maintain better eating habits and thus more prone to healthier weight. Whereas those who are bottle fed and the mother holds the bottle in the babies mout
