Exciting news! For a few months now, I’ve been working with an organisation called Parenting Science Gang – we are a group of mums (there may be a few dads, but it’s mostly mums) doing research into what interests us – and we’ve got a special Big Birthas Parenting Science Gang Group.
We’ve discussed what research we’d like to see, researched what science and data is already out there, and we’ve interviewed other scientists to get their views on what we should research and how to go about it, and now we’re finally ready, have received ethics approval, have volunteers ready to send out, receive, and analyse questionnaires – all we need are a few individuals who fit the criteria we’ve set to answer our email questions!
Could you help us?
We need people who:
are over 18
have had 2 or more pregnancies where their BMI was over 29
whose youngest child is under 3
whose births took place in the UK
are happy to be interviewed by email about their experiences
If you can say yes to all three, please follow this link for more information and sign up here to be interviewed –
I’ve agreed to share this information about a research study that’s relevant to BigBirthas who are pregnant, or gave birth 6-12 months ago.
I’m not involved with developing the research, nor am I a participant – had my babies too long ago now! But I’m always interested to hear of new research involving bigger mums and plus-size pregnancies. Certainly this one is taking an interesting new line in the ‘weight management’ sphere, might be interesting!
Maternal obesity is a growing public health issue, with one in five pregnant women classified as obese in the UK. Interventions to date have had modest impact on clinical outcomes. These have mainly focused on individual behaviour change and have methodological limitations.
There is growing evidence on the importance of social networks for obesity-risk behaviours. There are few trials using social networks to reduce maternal obesity and very few qualitative studies exploring social network influences on weight management in pregnancy and postpartum.
As part of this PhD study, we will explore the role of social networks in the development and maintenance of obesity in pregnancy and postpartum. We will also review current evidence related to interventions to help women manage their weight during pregnancy and/or postpartum, and take learning from this to inform the development of an intervention. The study aims to:
Complete a systematic review to investigate available interventions using social networks for weight management in pregnant and postpartum women
Explore the weight management experiences and the influences of social networks of first-time pregnant and postpartum women
Explore the social networks of interview participants to try to understand how these might be used to help them in their weight management attempts
Develop initial ideas for a theory-based intervention to support weight related behaviour change for pregnant and postpartum women that are overweight or obese.
The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists is seeking feedback from women on its new leaflet ‘Being overweight or obese during pregnancy and after birth‘.
The closing date for comments is midday on Friday 18 May.
Click on this link to access the RCOG page where you can read the draft leaflet and then feed back your thoughts via their online questionnaire. Make sure you feed back on the right one – NOT the hysteroscopy one (unless you happen to be interested in that too!)
I don’t want to prejudice your thinking, so I’m not saying what I wrote, but I will say that it’s nice to be asked our opinion at last!
Aaand… while you’re busy having your say, let me do another shameless plug for our Big Birthas Parenting Science Gang over on Facebook. We’ve been discussing the topic and what we might research for a little while, spoken to some really interesting experts to get their views; this week we’re talking to experienced midwife and waterbirth expert Dianne Garland (SRN RM ADM PGCEA MSc) of www.midwifeexpert.co.uk. We’re nearly at the point of deciding what we’re going to research – come along and get involved, you don’t have to be a scientist (I’m not!) to get involved in citizen science!
“Offspring of obese mothers prone to childhood obesity because they develop ‘fatty liver’ in womb“
So, that sounds worryingly simple, and it’s reinforced in the first paragraph:
“CHILDREN whose mothers were obese during pregnancy are more likely to become overweight themselves because they develop a “fatty liver” in the womb, research has found.”
As usual, we’re to blame, and “research has found it”, so the article says, so it must be true. Surely?
Unless you read on.
But the trouble is, how many people doread on?
How many mums, glancing at this and feeling sick to the pit of their stomach at the potential harm they’re doing to their baby/have done to their children, breath deeply, and flick past to something lighter to brighten the mood? If you’re already pregnant/have had the baby there is little point in finding more things to stress over – being a parent is hard enough!
How many healthcare professionals, busy on a lunchbreak, notice the heading and possibly the first paragraph and move on, because there’s no need to read it – it’s clearly just going to tell the thing they already believe to be true; overweight women are harming their children through greed, laziness, and ignorance?
Not all health professionals think this way, certainly, but I’ve met enough to know many do. Newspaper articles like this don’t help matters.
The second paragraph kicks us again when we’re down.
“It has long been known that overweight and obese women are more likely to give birth to heavy babies and that these infants are at greater risk of childhood obesity.”
Actually, (and please correct me if you know of more recent studies to the contrary) the link between big mum = big baby is only shown in studies which failed to adjust for poorly controlled blood glucose levels (often through poorly managed gestational diabetes). Where this is accounted for, there is no established correlation between otherwise obese mums and heavier babies at birth.
The second claim, that ‘these infants are at greater risk of childhood obesity’ does have some grounding; there are plenty of studies that show a correlation between maternal obesity and childhood obesity. It’s very easy to find data on the mother’s BMI at her booking appointment – and so again, lazy researchers have been known to draw conclusions that pregnancy BMI is a factor in the obesity of a 10 year old, failing to account for the environment the child is growing up in after its birth! Funny how these studies are so rarely interested in paternal obesity as an indicator, isn’t it, since that data is so much less readily available?
Then we get onto the third paragraph and the headline starts to unravel…
“However, research published in the Journal of Physiology has revealed for the first time how fat accumulates in the liver and metabolic pathways are disturbed in foetuses developing in obese mothers with diets high in sugar and fat.”
Hang on a second! That additional information makes quite a bit of difference!! “Obese mothers with diets high in sugar and fat“. So not ALL obese mothers, but the ones with poor diets. Obviously much less catchy as a headline though, isn’t it?
Then comes not just the unravelling, but the full scale chopping up of the headline with the sword of Damocles… if you read further down to paragraph eleven.
“The study was carried out using obese pregnant monkeys.”
I’m sorry? What?! Obese. Pregnant. Monkeys??!?
They didn’t mention that in the title, now, did they? No, in fact, The Herald used the word ‘childhood’ in the title. Could have used the more factually correct ‘infant’; it even comprises fewer letters, but implying that this is research on humans makes this a more compelling read, doesn’t it?
The very first word of the article itself is ‘Children’, which we now know should read ‘Baboons’!
Believe me, I could definitely make use of a prehensile tail…
I can’t do this, for instance. And I’m not overly fond of bananas.
If you google a bit, you’ll discover that Helen McArdle didn’t even write all of the article herself. Most of it, the accurate stuff, was lifted directly from this press release from the Physiological Society. The Herald’s only input was just to add confusion and a click-bait title – and bury the essential information deeper in the text. Standard journalistic fare, sadly.
So what can we do?
My advice? Always read the whole article if the headline makes you feel uncomfortable about being a bigger mum. More often than not, the article unravels itself as you read, and your fears prove false.
Even better, read the research for yourself, if possible. Info here on how to access research documents for free. (Be aware, this particular research paper also discusses the deaths of not-quite-to-term baby baboons…) [wpfilebase tag=file id=235 tpl=simple /]
This lazy journalism is so frustrating. The scientists will have spent months, maybe years conducting the research. They then wrote several thousand words to explain the research and their findings. But often the details and nuances are twisted and lost when distilled by a journalist into an attention-grabbing article.
