Pregnancy weight gain can harm babies - Study

LONDON (AP):

Women who gain too much weight during pregnancy have big babies, putting their children at risk of becoming heavy later on, a new study says.

American researchers followed all births in Michigan and New Jersey between 1989 and 2003. They then focused on women who had more than one child, to exclude the possibility that women who were genetically predisposed to be obese were simply passing those genes on to their babies.

Among the more than 513,000 women and their 1.1 million infants studied, scientists found that women who gained more than 53 pounds (24 kilograms) during their preg-nancy made babies who were about 150 grams (0.3 pounds) heavier at birth than infants of women who gained only 22 pounds (10 kilograms).