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Pregnancy is a sensitive stage in mothers and would normally require them to go on diets as prescrived by their obstetrician. Ideally this is to ensure that expectant mothers would not bloat and become overweight aside from looking out for the newborns due.

But a study offers an interesting take on mothers and it has something to do with drinking diet-based drinks. It turns out that researchers have discovered that babies born from mothers who loved to take diet drinks daily are more susceptible to become overweight.

The whole row offers something additionally disturbing though with the study adding that such could render life-long effects on the babies as well.

"To our knowledge, our results provide the first human evidence that artificial sweetener consumption during pregnancy may increase the risk of early childhood overweight," said Meghan Azad, of the Children's Hospital research Institute of Manitoba.

But she adds that their findings would need additional research as well to confirm their findings and place under consideration underlying biological mechanisms. Once that happens, the findings may eventually become the proper dietary recommendation that pregnant women may eventually follow.

Normally, pregnant women are advised by their doctors to keep a close watch of their weight. That would include the proper diet paired with necessary exercise such as daily walking.

As far as the use of artificial sweeteners, pregnant women may continue to do so in an effort to maintain the proper weight. In the same study, Azad reveals that about 30% claimed to have consumed artificially sweetened drinks with 5% drinking them daily.

"Our study confirms previous research showing that artificially sweetened beverage consumption is associated with obesity, diabetes, smoking, and poor diet quality, all of which are established maternal risk factors for obesity in offspring," the study adds.

While the findings seem alarming, further research is needed to back it all up. Susan Groth, an associate professor at the University of Rochester School of Nursing was informative thought it isn’t necessarily trying to send out a message, particularly to women dealing with pregnancy.

"The message is you need to be careful about drinking too much of these artificially sweetened beverages because it could affect your child down the road," explains Groth.

There are more details needed for the study to gain more credibility, including that of what babies were fed when they started eating solid food aside from the eating behaviour that mothers were into aside from diet drinks or regular soda.