Birth Weight and Maternal Socio-Demographic Characteristics in a Rural Tertiary Hospital

Abstract

Birth weight plays an important role in infant survival, child development, and adult metabolic diseases. Maternal characteristics have been variously shown to impact on the progress and outcome of pregnancy, especially those related to birth weight and perinatal mortality. We carried out this study to ascertain the relationship between maternal socio-demographic characteristics and neonatal birth weight. This was a descriptive cross-sectional study carried out in Irrua Specialist Teaching Hospital, a tertiary health facility in a rural area of Edo state, Nigeria. It was carried out from January 2017 to June 2017. A total of 106 pregnant women were recruited for the study. All the pregnant women who attended the antenatal clinic, and subsequently delivered at the labor ward of the hospital within the study period and their newborn were recruited for the study, with the exception of those who declined. An interviewer-administered questionnaire was used to retrieve information on sociodemographic characteristics from the participants. Data from the questionnaire were coded and entered into an electronic spreadsheet. The analysis was done with the aid of IBM SPSS version 21.0 software. Discrete data were presented as tables, diagrams, and proportions (percentages), while normally distributed continuous variables such as age, and birth weight were expressed as means and standard deviation. The statistical test of association was carried out between maternal sociodemographic characteristics and neonatal birth weight. Fishers, the exact test was used to test for association between the variables. Statistical level of significance was set at P<0.05. All the respondents were in the age range of 20-50 years, with the majority (56.6%) of them between 20-30 years. Mean age was 30.12±5.52. All were married and most (58.5%) had tertiary education. Most of the women (58.5%) were multiparous, and also 80.2% of them booked for antenatal care. Most (61.3%) attended antenatal clinic more than four times before delivery, while about 64.1% delivered their babies at term (37-40 weeks). About 64.2% of the babies had normal birth weight, and 50.9% of the babies were males. Neonatal birth weight was significantly associated with booking status, gestational age at delivery, and neonatal sex. There was no significant association between birth weight and parity, time of antenatal booking, and the number of antenatal visits. Our study has shown that the risk factors for LBW include; high parity, unbooked status, few numbers of antenatal visits, and pre-term delivery.