The Skinny on Weight While Trying to Conceive

Conception for the Underweight

By Shel Franco

Maybe your eyes glaze over when you smell a freshly bathed babe. Maybe you've been thinking about names and calculating due dates for months. Or maybe you've been trying to conceive for years. Regardless, it's not where you are on the "conception scale" that matters. The key to your healthy pregnancy just might depend on where you are on the bathroom scale.

Loving your spouse, having enough money, owning your own home and obtaining every other indicator of "parental readiness" matters little if your lifestyle and your underweight body can't handle pregnancy.

Everyone knows that exercise is important to good health, but not everyone acts on this little bit of knowledge. "There are people who can't be bothered [with exercise], and then there are people who become obsessed," says Brianna Lowe, a long distance runner in Millcreek, Pa. "That's me. I'm obsessed."

How obsessed is obsessed? "I think I calculated once that I was running something like 25 hours a week," Lowe says. "[Running] was like a part time job!"

What was pure enjoyment for Lowe ended up having a dark side. "My periods had been pretty regular as a young girl, but later on they were so screwed up," she says. "I would skip three months completely, and then I would end up with this faint half day thing once in a while."

Lowe was experiencing amenorrhea, or the cessation of the menstrual cycle. According to Stephen T. Chasen, M.D., assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University, in New York, N.Y., "In most women, there is a minimal weight below which the brain will stop signaling the ovaries to ovulate. This is in women who engage in sports in which they are encouraged to be very thin."

Want to see more?

• The Embarrassing Truth: Conception Facts You Need to Know But Are Too Afraid to Ask
• Healthy Eating During Preconception
• What You Should Know Before You Conceive
• Talk about it!