Maternal Behaviors during Pregnancy Impact Offspring Obesity Risk

Table 1

Characteristics of study participants and offspring.

	Overweight/obese	Normal weight	P value
	𝑁=132	𝑁=153
Age, years	28.8 ± 5.1	28.2 5.5	0.30
% primiparous	66.7%	85.5	0.0001
% non-Hispanic White	62.7%	71.5	0.09
% married	68.9%	68.3	0.91
% >high school education	84.7%	86.6	0.67
% income <$25,000/year	23.7	19.0	0.27
% community clinic	28.4%	25.1	0.54
Prepregnancy BMI, kg/m^2	30.5 ± 5.3	22.3 ± 1.8	.0001
% gain above 1990 IOM	63.8%	46.2	0.001
Infant at birth
Weeks of gestation at birth	38.6 ± 2.5	38.7 1.9	0.14
% male	50.9%	52.4	0.83
WFA birth	0.42 ± 0.92	0.21 ± 0.76	0.02
% macrosomic (>4000 grams) at birth	17.2%	4.8	0.0001
% >90th percentile at birth	19.6%	7.1	0.001
% <10th percentile at birth	3.6%	2.2	0.53
Infant at 6 months
WFA 6 mo	0.38 ± 1.1	0.34 ± 1.0	0.74
	𝑁=121	𝑁=128
% >90th percentile at 6 months	17.6%	36.8	0.14
% <10th percentile at 6 months	7.6%	2.4	0.14
% mostly breastfeeding over first 6 months	28.2%	36.8	0.47

IOM: 1990 Institute of Medicine Guidelines;
WFA birth: weight for gestational age z-scores with Oken et al. [20] reference data;
WFA 6 mo: weight for age, sex-specific z-scores with 2000 Centers for Disease Control reference data.