How does maternal height and different weight factors affect the newborn?

Abstract

There are many variables that determine newborn weight, like mother’s specific physiological variables and pathological variables. Among the mother’s physiological variables, there are several possibilities such as age, weight, height, number of pregnancies, educational level, profession, etc. This is a prospective study, based on observation of cases in the most important hospitals of the central region of the country: Hospital Provincial Docente Ambato and Hospital Basico Pelileo, between January 2008 and February 2009 in a sample of 1,220 pregnant women whom delivered only one live newborn. This study intends to relate mother’s height with newborn’s weight, plus complementary indicators. Initially, we performed a descriptive analysis of the sample and afterwards an inferential analysis forming three groups of different ages. In these cases, we used ANOVA test for quantitative variables and Chi2 for qualitative variables. We analyzed 1,220 newborn babies from women without any pathology involving fetal growth. We found a significant relation between mother’s height and newborn weight, situation which is ratified in teenage mothers. The results of this study show significant evidence of the association between mother’s anthropometric variables and the normal term newborn average weight. Considering that weight and weight gain are modifiable factors with timely intervention, and mother’s height is not, we recommend to take into consideration mother’s height influence in NB weight classification (small, adequate, big).