Obese pregnant women are injuring midwives while giving birth because they are too heavy, top doctors have warned.
Hospital staff are struggling with the physical strain of handling severely overweight women as soaring obesity levels mean half of mothers-to-be are now too fat.
Professor Janice Rymer, Vice President of the Royal College Of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, said treating obese pregnant women is ‘physically very demanding’ and involves lots of ‘huffing and puffing’.
She said: ‘On the question of whether morbidly obese women should be refused surgery, you have to consider that with obese mothers, surgery is physically very demanding.
Hospital staff are struggling with the physical strain of handling severely overweight women as soaring obesity levels mean half of mothers-to-be are now too fat
‘There is huffing and puffing. You do get muscoskeletal injuries.’
Professor Fiona Denison, an obstetrician who is a world-leading expert on maternal obesity, said the strain of ‘moving and handling’ heavy women caused back injuries.
She told the RCOG’s world congress that hospitals have a ‘duty of care’ towards midwives which they must consider when planning treatment for obese women.
Professor Denison said: ‘We have a duty of care to the women we look after, but we also have a duty of care to the healthcare professionals who are looking after them.
‘When it comes to labour and delivery, we have to advise some women against certain types of delivery because if the mother collapses while giving birth, midwives risk injury from lifting them up.
‘If someone has had an operation and they’re unable to move, then we have to move them from operating table to the delivery bed, but if someone is 140kg then that’s not easy.
‘If women want to give birth in water but they faint or collapse, trying to get an obese woman out of a pool is much harder than if they are a healthy weight.’
