Of the 1,035 nulliparous women in Kansas City whose pre-pregnancy BMI classified them as overweight, 55% were overweight prior to their second pregnancy, 33% either retained weight from their first pregnancy or otherwise gained sufficient weight to increase their BMI classification to obese, and only 12% lost sufficient weight between pregnancies to change their BMI classification to normal or underweight. While the univariate analysis showed that non-white women were significantly more likely to shift from overweight to obese, race was not a significant factor in the multivariate analysis. In that analysis, the upward shift in BMI was associated with being unmarried and with an interval between the first and second births of 18 or more months, while the downward shift in BMI was associated with lower gestational weight gain. These findings are consistent with observations that parous women have a higher incidence of obesity and minority women have a higher incidence of parity related obesity than white women.