Women Go Under the Knife To Get Pregnant
July 4, 2011 No Comments
For overweight women who can’t get pregnant, weight loss surgery might be an option to increase their chances.
The link between weight and fertility is still “meager” at this point, with more studies needed to give women definite answers, but a growing number of women are having bariatric surgery if they can’t lose weight by any natural methods.
While we can’t yet conclude that weight loss will lead to pregnancy, “Obesity can cause infertility in women when extra fat cells disrupt the balance of the hormones needed to get pregnant,” says Mitchell Roslin, the chief of obesity surgery at Lenox Hill in Manhattan.
The many success stories out there give us hope that it’s working. Six women diagnosed as infertile got pregnant after the operation, according to a recent study. After eight years attempting to get pregnant, Jassira Espailat Batista finally decided to have bariatric surgery. She now has a son and another child on the way. We can also be optimistic that kids born to mothers who had gastric bands around their stomachs were deemed to be as healthy as other children.
But we must be cautious about new developments, especially since fertility experts themselves are still on the fence about whether weight loss surgery can be considered a remedy for infertility. While it’s becoming more accepted in the medical field, bariatric surgery patients have a higher risk of iron and folic acid deficiency, which are essential to a healthy pregnancy, says Christine Ren-Fielding, the chief of bariatric surgry at NYU.
Of course surgery should be the last resort, but at least hospital doors are opening for women who hope to be moms.
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