Ernest Hemingway once responded to the challenge to write a story in once sentence with the following line: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” If you are having trouble conceiving, you personally know the pain that short sentence conveys. However, what you may not know is how obesity could be affecting your ability to have a child.

As a woman, when you are obese, your body chemistry can throw off the cycles of two main sources of female estrogen, the ovary and the adrenal gland. Since most hormones are related to cholesterol – and obese individuals are at risk for high cholesterol – it makes sense that estrogen production would also be affected. The imbalance in these two sources of estrogen can disrupt your ovulation cycles, which can make it harder to become pregnant, and it can also lead to pre-cancerous changes in the uterus itself.

By losing weight through gastric bypass, gastric sleeve or Lap-Band surgery, you may be able to increase your chances of regular ovulation and therefore becoming pregnant. Not only that, if you do lose weight before a pregnancy, your chances of developing preeclampsia or other complications during pregnancy is also reduced.  

It’s important to note, however, that although bariatric surgery can help you achieve weight loss that could lead to a successful pregnancy, you should not get pregnant for 18 to 24 months after having weight loss surgery of any kind.  During this delicate time after surgery, your body will be adjusting to new ways of interacting with food and absorbing nutrition, and this could affect your baby during the critical first trimester. In some cases, women who have gotten pregnant have had to have their weight loss surgery procedures reversed to prevent malnutrition in themselves and their unborn child.

Once you successfully pass your routine follow-up visits and your weight has stabilized, you can begin to discuss and appropriate time to begin trying to get pregnant after weight loss surgery. To learn more about weight loss surgery in Decatur, TX, call Obesity Health Solutions toll-free at 866-980-8598, or email us at info@obesityhealthsolutions.com.