I'm 38 years old 5'3 and 320 pounds . I'm thinking of having a baby and I'm kinda confused between having it before or after the surgery. I have a small hiatal hernia and reflux . Any advice?

I was over weight with all of my pregnancies, and for that reason I was considered high risk. I had to go through a lot of extra testing and had to watch my weight extremely close. There's also a high risk of gestational diabetes.

I had my 4th baby in March '12 and had surgery in Dec '12. My doctor required me to be 6 months postpartum before they would do the surgery.

My advice would be to have the surgery first, lose the weight and then get pregnant. I think it's the healthier option.

Dee is right. Being even "overweight" can even put you at risk for miscarriage, gestational diabetes, and high blood pressure (Preeclampsia). Surgery first! It will be easier to get pregnant at a healthier weight too.

My Doctor's office was pretty up front about post surgery pregnancy and said give it at least two years so that you can reach goal/stable weight, make sure you're healthy, and all that good stuff before becoming pregnant. There are people who have (inadvertently) not waited quite so long, but it's much more difficult if you don't wait post op.

I will be trying for baby 3 next summer. I planned this specifically because I knew the timing we are planning. I will be 18 months post-op and my doctor has said that's perfect. I say lose the weight! Being pregnant is do much easier when you aren't lugging around all the extra. I gained 50lbs between kids 1 and 2.

The most common medical advice is to not conceive for 2years post-op. however many surgeons are moving to a 1year recommendation.

I would say if you are not willing to wait at least 1year post-op then have the baby first. If you can wait the year, then I'm sure you'd ave a healthier & happier pregnancy at a healthier weight.

Good luck

If you have any reason to suspect your fertility weigh this decision carefully after speaking to your surgeon AND your gynecologist. Just be sure that it's the right choice.

We did ART both times - IVF w/ICSI to have my twins (before VSG) and then, two years after VSG I did FET with the frozen embryos.

I will say that even though many docs say one year, I would say that 18-24 months is far more reasonable. It's perfectly possible to have a healthy, uneventful pregnancy sooner than that and many women do.

But my personal experience (yours will be individual to you) was that I really didn't have much capacity until AFTER the one year mark. I didn't start eating more than 1,000 calories a day until after a year and a half post op. And it was only after that point that I could hit all my nutritional goals without a shake each day (though I still have one) and without eating from sun up to sun down.

To complicate matters, during pregnancy my sleeve has had more variation than ever before. Some days I can eat a solid 1,400 calories (my goal is 1,400-1,600 daily for pregnancy) and be fine. The next day I'm struggling to get in 800 calories. My restriction changes as I get bigger and with the hormones that are going insane in my body right now. Add in that I already had lactose intolerance AND this baby won't allow me to eat meat without morning sickness...eating is a challenge much like it was three or four months post op for me.

And that's just eating. It took me until over a year to finally normalize my Vitamin deficiencies - I had real problems with Iron and B12.

I am not saying any of this to scare you. You could have a completely different outcome. But you won't know until AFTER you're sleeved how you'll react and cope. So there are a number of things to weigh before making the choice.

If your fertility is great and you don't expect any issues, have surgery first. Wait between one and two years and get pregnant at that point, even if you're not at goal yet. Your pregnancy will be more successful for each and every pound you lose prior, but getting all the way to goal isn't absolutely necessary for a successful outcome.

Good luck whatever you decide. I'm not high risk due to my sleeve and the baby has been very healthy and is growing normally. But I will say that this one baby post sleeve has been harder on me than the twins were when I was morbidly obese and had diabetes!

~Cheri

Thank you Cheri. I alway enjoy seeing an articulate & experienced response to a question.

At 38, age is big factor but since you could potentially gain a lot with pregnancy, weight is a factor too. If you have your surgery this year and wait the full two years, you will be 40-41 depending upon the ultimate timeline. OTOH, if your weight is down, you might have better chances at conceiving. Is your gyn pushibg you one way or the other?

I've not had a baby post op but Ive had two before. Here's my experience .....

With my first, I gained so much weight. Got up to 346 from 280. Had high blood pressure, was extremely swollen from head to toe, and had to have him early via csection.

Second baby tried to eat healthy to prevent prior complications. Was doing fine until 37 weeks my blood pressure sky rocketed and I got back up to 318. I had to have an emergency csection again!

Being obese and pregnant is high risk. I had my sleeve 7 weeks after my last child was born. I know age is a factor too so honestly, I don't know what the best decision is. I'd talk to both surgeon and obgyn to see what's best for you.

Good luck!

Thanks so much for all your advices and experiences. As you can see the clock is ticking for me. I had 4 children already oldest is 21 youngest 16 so I have kids already but I'm engaged to be married for a second time and my fiancé doesn't have kids so we're kinda trying to figure out when it would be the perfect time to have a baby. I think I'm going to try and lose weight on my own being that I've never really tried to go on a diet , just been negative all around about exercising and I've changed my eating habits and it doesn't seen to help too much unless I put in some hard core exercise. I'm intimidated by heart rate raising while exercising and kinda scared I might have a heart attack. It's so overwhelming not knowing what to to but something tells me I just give myself a chance before making such a drastic decision like VSG surgery.

Weight Watchers is a great program. You can do it online. I lpst 70 pounds on it once! They have forums too with a lot of inspiring people.