A lot of women struggle with fertility issues, many of which are caused or made worse by carrying around excess weight. Sleeve gastrectomy, or gastric sleeve surgery, can help patients achieve significant weight loss in under a year’s time. However, patients wonder, can you have a pregnancy after gastric sleeve?
How Excess Weight Harms Fertility
Excess weight can have an adverse effect on fertility in women. Carrying extra pounds causes hormonal changes that affect ovulation function, making it irregular and sometimes causing it and menstruation to stop altogether. Obesity has also been linked to infertility and miscarriage. As such, weight loss is a common strategy to boost fertility and is recommended by specialists for many people struggling to conceive.
The Effect of Gastric Sleeve on Fertility
Not everyone can lose significant weight on their own. Surgeries like gastric sleeve are often the tool people need to finally get their BMI to a healthy number. This weight loss is great for fertility, but what about the impact of the surgery itself?
It’s possible to get pregnant after gastric sleeve surgery, and this is true for any type of weight loss procedure, including gastric banding. These procedures involve the gastrointestinal tract and should not have any direct impact on your reproductive organs.
However, since they trigger massive weight loss, over time, they can boost your fertility. So, not only is pregnancy after gastric sleeve possible, it is more likely than prior to the procedure.
Bariatric Surgery Isn’t Always the Solution
While there is a lot that massive weight loss can do, it isn’t able to cure all fertility problems. Before you settle on gastric sleeve or other procedures as the method for reversing your infertility and allowing you to have the child you dream of, you need to see a fertility specialist.
Infertility is complex, and even if you are overweight, it could be that there are other factors at play that will prevent you from conceiving even after you shed those excess pounds. Additionally, sometimes the fertility issues are on your partner’s end, not yours. If your fertility specialist rules out other causes, then you should move on to looking at weight loss surgery as a cure.
Are you interested in the gastric sleeve in Tijuana as a method for improving your fertility? We’d love to help. Contact ALO Bariatrics about our weight loss surgeries in Tijuana, Mexico.
Ready to learn more? Read: Everything You Need to Know About the Gastric Sleeve.
