Exercise During Pregnancy, Maternal Prepregnancy Body Mass Index, and Birth Weight
- 1 February 2010
- journal article
- Published by Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) in Obstetrics & Gynecology
- Vol. 115 (2), 331-337
- https://doi.org/10.1097/aog.0b013e3181ca4414
Abstract
To estimate the direct associations between exercise during pregnancy and offspring birth weight and between maternal prepregnancy body mass index (BMI) and birth weight. Furthermore, we estimated the indirect association between maternal BMI and birth weight, explained by exercise during pregnancy.This study included pregnant women and their offspring recruited from 1999 to 2006 in the Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study, conducted by the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. Linear regression analyses were based on exposure data from two self-administered questionnaires during pregnancy and birth weight data from the Medical Birth Registry of Norway.The study included 43,705 pregnancies. The median exercise frequency during the first 17 weeks of gestation was six times per month and four times per month thereafter until week 30. Mean maternal prepregnancy BMI was 24 kg/m, and mean birth weight of the offspring was 3,677 g. The adjusted direct association between exercise and birth weight was a 2.9-g decrease in birth weight per unit increase in exercise (one time per month). In contrast, the adjusted direct association between BMI and birth weight was a 20.3-g increase in birth weight for a one-unit increase in BMI (1 kg/m), and the indirect association explained by exercise was only a 0.3-g increase in birth weight.Exercise during pregnancy has a minor impact on birth weight, whereas maternal prepregnancy BMI has a larger influence. Thus, we suggest that health care professionals should focus on normalizing the BMI of women in fertile ages.II.Keywords
This publication has 29 references indexed in Scilit:
- Self‐selection and bias in a large prospective pregnancy cohort in NorwayPaediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology, 2009
- Physical Activity and Fetal Growth During PregnancyObstetrics & Gynecology, 2007
- Determinants of birthweight inequalities: Population‐based studyPediatrics International, 2006
- Cohort profile: The Norwegian Mother and Child Cohort Study (MoBa)International Journal of Epidemiology, 2006
- Swimming and Birth WeightEpidemiology, 2002
- Aerobic exercise for women during pregnancyPublished by Wiley ,2002
- Antepartum, intrapartum, and neonatal significance of exercise on healthy low-risk pregnant working womenObstetrics & Gynecology, 2002
- Maternal obesity and pregnancy outcome: a study of 287 213 pregnancies in LondonInternational Journal of Obesity, 2001
- Employment, exertion, and pregnancy outcome: Assessment by kilocalories expended each dayAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1996
- Maternal carbohydrate metabolism and its relationship fetal growth and body compositionAmerican Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, 1995