Pregnancy, BMI, Calories and Weight Gain Recommendations

Another midwife just gave me the following helpful information about counting calories during pregnancy. I thought I would pass it along.

When pregnant you need approximately 300 more calories a day than when you are not pregnant. The recommendation is 2500 calories per day for pregnant women.

There are also BMI recommendations which recommend different weight gain depending on the pre-pregnant weight/ht/BMI:

Use the lower end for short women, the higher end for tall women, and they recommend the higher end for adolescents and black women as they have a higher risk for low birth weight babies.

Low BMI: <19.8 recommended wt gain is 28-40lbs.

Normal BMI: 19.8-26 recommended wt gain is 25-35lbs.

High BMI: 26-29 recommended wt gain is 15-25lbs.

Obese >29 recommended wt gain is 15 lb

Community-based Midwifery Care During the Childbearing Year, pp.156-157 by Linda Walsh

~ Beth

thank you for this.  i am mostly replying so it will be easy for me to find this again... hubbie and i are going to be trying... we'll see how it goes.....  2500 sounds like alot to me!