Emerging evidence from retrospective cohort studies suggests that weight loss in pregnancy for obese women may have substantial benefits for both the mother and infant. Oken 2009 reviewed 2011 mother-child pairs in the US against five adverse outcomes related to gestational weight gain: preterm birth, small-for-gestational- age infant, large-for-gestational-age infant, substantial maternal postpartum weight retention, and child obesity at age of three years. The results indicated that the lowest predicted prevalence of all five adverse outcomes occurred with a weight loss of 0.19 kg/week for obese women, which equates to a total loss of 7.6 kg for obese women over all of the pregnancy (Oken 2009). Beyerlein 2011 reviewed 709,575 births in Bavaria from 2000 to 2007 and stratified the data according to BMI category. Small weight losses of up to 5 kg were associated with lower risks for pre-eclampsia in obese class II women and non-elective caesarean section in obese class 1 women (Beyerlein 2011). Less large-for- gestational-age births were also reported for obese class I women, but an increase in small-for-gestational-age births was also noted with weight loss for this category of obesity (Beyerlein 2011). For women obese class III, no increase in neonatal morbidity or mortality was observed (Beyerlein 2011).