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We estimate the parental investment response to the child endowment at birth, by analysing the effect of child birth weight on the hours worked by the mother two years after birth. Mother’s working hours soon after child birth are a measure of investments in their children as a decrease (increase) in hours raises (lowers) her time investment in the child. The child birth endowment is endogenously determined in part by unobserved traits of parents, such as investments during pregnancy. We adopt an instrumental variables estimation. Our instrumental variables are measures of the father’s health endowment at birth, which drive child birth weight through genetic transmission but does not affect directly the mother’s postnatal investments, conditional on maternal and paternal human capital and prenatal investments. We find an inverted U-shape relationship between mothers worked hours and birth weight, suggesting that both low and extremely high child birth weight are associated with child health issues for which mothers compensate by reducing their labour supply. The mother’s compensating response to child birth weight seems slightly attenuated for second and later born children. Our study contributes to the literature on the response of parental investments to child’s health at birth by proposing new and more credible instrumental variables for the child health endowment at birth and allowing for a heterogeneous response of the mother’s investment for first born and later born children.

This paper evaluates the Nutrition Intervention Project (NIP) implemented statewide in the State of Virginia to determine the effectiveness of nutritional intervention in decreasing pre‐term births and low birth weight (LBW) babies to at‐risk pregnant women in urban and rural areas. Sample size was 1,284. Majority of the respondents were white, primiparae, between 20‐29 years of age, and underweight (BMI < 19.8). Twenty‐one per cent of the of the births were pre‐term, and 13.3 per cent were in the LBW category. Regression analysis indicated that number of visits to the nutritionist was positively associated with birth weight and gestational age of the baby. Nutrition intervention (NI) decreased the smoking behaviour and improved the intake of iron supplements, both of which improved the weight gain and pregnancy outcomes. Effects analysis indicated that the causal effect operated both via intervening variables as well as directly between nutritional intervention and pregnancy outcomes. The path from NI to birth outcomes via weight gain was the strongest. Respondents in urban areas had a higher risk of pre‐term births than rural areas.

This study aims to examine the effect of maternal food intake before and during pregnancy on birth weight.

As a prospective cohort study, a total of 585 pregnant women of first trimester, visiting Tehran Metropolitan Area public health centers and private sectors (clinics and hospitals), were interviewed at first phase, and pregestational dietary intake was obtained by a 168-item semiquantitative food frequency questionnaire. At the third trimester, dietary recalls were collected via interview. Finally, birth weight information was extracted from health records. Univariate and multivariate analysis was used to explore the effect of maternal and nutritional factors on birth weight.

The results of the analysis show that direct measures of nutrition, measured as food group consumption at first and third trimester of pregnancy, had no significant effect on birth weight once the confounding factors were controlled (p > 0.05). Of control variables included in the analysis, twin pregnancy outcome (p = 0.000), pregnancy number (p = 0.04), prepregnancy weight (p = 0.004) (marginally significant) and gestational age (p = 0.000) (marginally significant) were associated with birth weight.

The results of this study show no significant role of mother’s nutrition during pregnancy on birth weight, while long-term nutrition outcomes such as prepregnancy weight had significant role. It seems the main reasons behind less important role of pregnancy nutrition on birth weight in this study include the following: food intake deficiency is not a major problem for participants, and cross-sectional data on food intake are less important on outcome of pregnancy weight than long-term nutritional status outcome variables such as mother’s weight and height. This finding should be addressed in public health planning for women at childbearing age.

Nowadays, the importance of infant birth weight (IBW) as a key factor in determining the future of physical and mental development of children is a growing concern. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between maternal characteristics and IBW among pregnant women who were referred to health centers in Qazvin city in the year 2016.

A descriptive-analytical study was conducted among pregnant women in 28–36 weeks of gestation who referred to healthcare centers and facilities affiliated by the Qazvin University of Medical Sciences in April–June 2016. The associations between maternal physical activity, mothers’ socioeconomic status and birth weight were examined by SPSS Software Package version 16 through linear and logistic regression tests.

Linear regression modeling suggested that maternal weight (p=0.001), income (p=0.04), gestational age of delivery (p=0.00) and pre-pregnancy BMI (p=0.02) were positively associated with birth weight, while occupational and heavy physical activity (p=0.003 and 0.008, respectively) were negatively associated with IBW. In this study, low birth weight infants are compared to those with normal weight belonged to mothers who have spent more time in doing heavy physical activities (OR=1.11, 95% CI 1.01–1.23). Also infants with low birth weight compared to others in the normal weight category were born from mothers with lower pre-pregnancy BMI (OR=0.65, 95% CI 0.62–0.78), gestational age of delivery (OR=0.82, 95% CI 0.79–0.86), maternal weight (OR=0.86, 95% CI 0.84–0.88) and income (OR=0.79, 95% CI 0.69–0.83).

The study findings revealed that certain maternal characteristics could play a significant role in IBW. Despite the importance, in most of developing countries (particularly Iran), future mothers are not advised about an appropriate weight gain during pregnancy or the optimal level of physical activity in such a period of time. Therefore, counseling pregnant women and giving them proper information on appropriate perinatal care would be helpful in order to have pregnancies with optimal outcomes.

The authors applied several statistical methods to analyze IBW among mothers with different maternal characteristics and predict birth weight based on contributing factors.

The nutritional status of a woman before and during pregnancy is important for a healthy pregnancy outcome. The increasing prevalence of maternal overweight and obesity worldwide has become a problem of concern among public health professionals. The purpose of this paper is to review the evidence regarding the impact of maternal weight on pregnancy outcomes to facilitate the provision of evidence-based information to pregnant women during antenatal clinics in Ghana.

A search was conducted in PubMed, PLOS ONE, Cochrane, Embase and bibliographies for all studies on maternal weight and pregnancy outcomes published from January 2000 to May 2013. The key words used for the search were: “pre-pregnancy BMI”, “gestational weight gain”, “maternal weight”, “pregnancy outcomes” and “birth outcomes”.

The search yielded 113 papers; out of these, 35 studies were included in the review after exclusion of duplicates and irrelevant papers. Excluded papers included animal studies and human studies that did not meet inclusion criteria.

The review only considered papers published from 2000 to 2013 and might have left out other important papers published before 2000 and after 2013.

The origins of the studies included in the review suggest paucity of studies on maternal weight and pregnancy outcomes in developing countries where there is a double burden of malnutrition. There is the need for more studies to be initiated in this area.

Results of this review have revealed that the extremes of maternal weight prior to and during pregnancy increase the risk of maternal and fetal complications.

This paper provides evidential information on the impact of maternal weight on pregnancy outcomes for counseling during antenatal clinics.

This paper aims to evaluate the effectiveness of nutrition interventions conducted in pregnant adolescents and their implications for future research.

The papers in this systematic study were searched through PubMed, PMC, the Cochrane Library (Trial), ScienceDirect and Google Scholar that were published from 2000 to 2019. An experimental study using a randomized controlled trial (RCT) or non-RCT among pregnant adolescents aged 10-19 years were inclusion criteria for this study. While exclusion criteria were studies published before 2000, non-experimental study and non-English-language studies.

A total of 14 studies were identified in this review. Six studies provided interventions in the form of nutrition and health education and seven studies provided interventions in the form of nutritional supplementation (calcium, vitamin D, iron-folate, lipid-based nutrient supplements and multi-micronutrient powder. One study provided dietary intervention. The interventions in pregnant adolescents in the form of education and nutritional supplementation effectively increased the knowledge and nutrition of pregnant adolescents and decreased low birth weight (LBW) and premature birth. The impact on birth outcomes was still quite diverse. Some of the studies in this review were conducted without a comparison group, a small sample size and conducted in health-care facilities.

This systematic review implies a future nutrition intervention for pregnant adolescents is needed to improve nutritional status of pregnant adolescents and birth outcome. Future research using double blind RCT method with bigger sample size and various nutritional outcome are wide open to be developed.

Interventions in pregnant adolescents effectively increased the knowledge and nutrition of pregnant adolescents and decreased LBW and premature birth. The program implementation in the community needs to be improved so that the effectiveness of the program remains optimal as in healthcare facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to establish socio-economic factors and maternal practices that determine child mortality in Uganda.

The paper examines the role of sex, birth weight, birth order and duration of breastfeeding of a child; age, marital status and education of the mother; and household wealth in determining child mortality. The study employs a logistic regression model to establish which of the factors significantly impacts child mortality in Uganda.

The study established that education level, age and marital status of the mother as well as household wealth significantly impact child mortality. Also important are the sex, birth weight, birth order and breastfeeding duration.

Policies aimed at promoting breastfeeding and education of female children can make a significant contribution to the reduction of child mortality in Uganda.

Health care intervention programs should focus on single, poor and uneducated mothers as their children are at great risk due to poor and inadequate health care utilization.

This paper could be the first effort in examining child mortality status in Uganda using a logistic regression model.

Introduction: The birth of a preterm child requires hospitalization in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), which is a very stressful experience for parents. Aim: To determine the stress level of parents of preterm babies admitted to intensive and sub-intensive units in two hospitals in Northern Italy and its association with their sociodemographic variables and the clinical conditions of their newborns.

The sampling was non-probabilistic and included parents of preterm babies admitted to intensive and/or sub-intensive care for at least 10 days. Instruments: (1) information deduced from the clinical record of preterm newborns; (2) sociodemographic determinants of parents' well-being deduced from a questionnaire; (3) parental stress scale: neonatal intensive care unit (PSS:NICU), which measures the perception of parents about stressors from the physical and psychological environment of the NICU.

Results: A total of 104 parents of 59 hospitalized preterm babies participated in the study. The average parental stress level was 1.87 ± 0.837. The subscale score that got higher was parent-infant relationship subscale. Concerning the infant characteristics, the birth weight of the babies and the length of their hospitalization affected the parents' stress level. Looking at parents' sociodemographic characteristics instead, the greater predictors were gender, age and occupational social class.

The parental role alteration caused by infant premature birth and consequent hospitalization is a major stressor for parents and in particular for mothers. The variables that resulted positively associated with higher stress in parents of preterm infants hospitalized are specific parental characteristics, including not adequately or previously studied ones, and infant characteristics.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the major factors affecting health during pregnancy, birth and the postnatal period and outline the evidence for interventions to improve outcomes in women and their children.

Selective review of the literature. A number of electronic bibliographic databases were searched, including the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, PubMed and PsycINFO, for relevant studies published since 1990. Papers were restricted to those published in English which presented data from studies conducted in high-income countries, with priority given to systematic reviews, randomised controlled trials and other quantitative studies which present a higher level of evidence.

Many factors may affect maternal and infant health during and after pregnancy. Potentially modifiable factors with an evidence base to support intervention include improving diet, and the avoidance of smoking, alcohol and illicit drugs. Good clinical management of underlying illness is also important, along with attempts to engage women in improving health prior to conception and postnatally rather than once pregnancy is established.

The evidence base for interventions on some potentially modifiable risk factors is incomplete. There is good evidence of benefit from some health behaviours such as smoking cessation and uptake of breastfeeding and accumulating evidence of the benefit of some models of maternity care.

Good maternal health during and after pregnancy plays a key role in giving the child a better start in life. Improved health behaviours are vital but often these are heavily dependent on social context and hence working to tackle social inequality and provide maternity care tailored to individual need is likely to be just as important as trying to directly alter behaviour.

Pregnancy and the postnatal period present an opportunity to improve maternal health and have a positive effect on future child health. Greater investment is required in this antenatal period of life.

Caesarean section (CS) is being used as a life-saving surgical tool when complications arise in the process of childbirth. CS rates have dramatically increased across the world, especially in recent decades. In this background, the purpose of this paper is to explore the CS rates and its determinants in Karnataka, India.

The study uses multiple rounds of the District Level Household Survey (DLHS) data to show the trends, differentials and determinants in CS deliveries. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses have been carried out, and the χ² test and logistic regression models were applied.

Result shows a sharp increase in CS rates across Karnataka; further, this is high and reaches an alarming level in southern parts of the state. Along with a huge rural–urban difference, significant biological and socio-economic differences were observed. Further, a very dramatic increase in the CS rate was observed in private health facilities, whereas it was stagnant or even decreased in public health facilities during recent years. Mothers age at birth, birth weight, birth order, multiple births, birth institution and place of residence were significantly associated with CS delivery. Unlike these biological factors, the social-economic factors like maternal education, caste, religion and below poverty line household were not found to be significant in determining CS deliveries.

A strong policy to address the dramatic increase in CS deliveries is the need of the hour. Further, there should be a proper mechanism at national, state and sub-state level to provide appropriate checks and monitoring for CS deliveries which are unnecessary.