INFORMATION FOR WOMEN WHO HAVE EATING DISORDERS DURING PREGNANCY OR BREASTFEEDING

What are eating disorders during pregnancy?

Pregnancy typically brings about changes in your eating patterns and your taste for various foods. In the early stages of pregnancy, nausea can reduce your appetite, whereas later you may develop particular cravings, and still later you might be hungry frequently, but also feel very full and sometimes experience reflux of stomach acid, so you’ll need to eat small, frequent meals. In contrast with these ordinary changes in eating patterns, this report focuses on abnormal eating that co-exists in pregnancy in women who suffer from the disorders outside of pregnancy. The most common disorder, simple over-eating, is a component of obesity, a major health problem affecting a large fraction of people in the developed world, including pregnant women, but that’s not the focus here either. Rather, we shall discuss eating disorders that are behavioral problems, such that they are diagnosed as specific psychiatric conditions. Of these, there are four main disorders or disorder categories.