ATTENTION TO DIET CAN HELP IBD MOMS HAVE BIGGER BABIES

Pregnant women with IBD (inflammatory bowel disease) can have problems with their pregnancy—particularly, earlier (preterm) deliveries and small babies. What is less understood is whether active IBD directly causes pregnancy complications, or if having IBD causes poor nutrition which can affect the development of the fetus.  Is that because their disease is active or because they aren't eating well?

Researchers in Norway tried to answer that question by looking at almost 84,000 pregnant women (183 had Crohn's disease and 240 had ulcerative colitis (UC). They examined the relationship between their dietary patterns and pregnancy outcomes (specifically preterm deliveries and small babies) using dietary data collected from the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa) (1999-2008). The researchers  found that most of the women followed 1 of 3 diet patterns.

Dietary Patterns of the women from MoBa:

• high in: fruits, vegetables (raw and cooked), poultry, beans, nutes, cereal, olive oil, and tuna 
• low in: processed meats, white bread 
• Similar to Mediterranean diet

Western Diet:

• high in: sugary/fatty foods and drinks (soda, pancakes, white bread, cake, dairy desserts, fried potatoes, mayonnaise, processed meats) 
• Similar to Standard American Diet

Traditional (Norwegian) Diet:

• high in: fish, gravy, potatoes, cooked vegetables, rice porridge 
• low in: pizza, tacos, poultry 
• Similar to traditional diet in Scandinavian Peninsula

After analyzing the MoBa data, the researchers found that those who pregnant women who were on a the "traditional" diet had a lower risk of having small babies who were small for gestational age (small babies), though the research wasn't able to find any difference causing earlier births.

Could be because fresh fruits and vegetables can be hard to digest when IBD is active or that the traditional Norwegian diet supplies one or more of the nutrients mothers and babies need to develop. Of course, this is still a limited study with only several hundred pregnancies, so it will be important to see if similar research turns up similar evidence, that diets high in fish, poultry and cooked vegetables will help women with IBD have bigger babies, even if they don't protect against having a preterm delivery.