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Home › Articles › Eating Disorders › Recovery and Risk

Recovery and Risk

Coping With an Eating Disorder During Pregnancy

By Kate Riener Boyd

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Pregnancy weight gain is bittersweet – not exactly fun to get on the scale each month, but a hallmark of a healthy baby. For some women, pregnancy is made harder by the history of an eating disorder. The heated focus on food and exercise can fuel a dormant fire.

Once a pregnancy is discovered, it is imperative to get eating disorder symptoms under control. Studies suggest that starving or purging during pregnancy increase health risks such as miscarriage, pre-eclampsia, births with complications (including Cesarean deliveries), premature births and delayed fetal growth.

Eve Collins* had been in recovery from bulimia for five years when she got pregnant and is grateful she had treatment first. "I can't imagine how it would feel to be caught in the tornado of an eating disorder and be pregnant at the same time," she says. "I would feel worried about the baby, but I know it is impossible to stop on your own."

Health risks for women in recovery from an eating disorder are similar to women who have never had one. They face many of the same issues as other women, but also grapple with gaining weight without resorting to disorder behavior.

Getting Through the Early Months
The first trimester can be the most trying for a woman in recovery, now expected to eat healthy all the time. Some women get pregnant hoping that it will force better eating habits. They may get lucky as Angela Fallon* did. She is currently 16 weeks pregnant and has found that compulsive overeating is not an issue. "I can't overeat to the extent I used to – I'm either not interested or there isn't room," she says. Fallon's purging was under control with private therapy before getting pregnant.

"I went to my nutritionist to have her change my eating plan," Collins says. "Sometimes it was hard eating more, or less, than I wanted. I just had to trust the plan I was on." Even with guidance, slip-ups are possible. Few of us are able to follow the ideal diet to the letter, but a woman who has had an eating disorder may obsess about her cravings. Collins relied on her experience in Overeaters Anonymous to help her through backslides. "I eat pretty healthily and have found, through recovery, it is OK to eat crappy sometimes," she says.


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