Obstetric implications of mother undernourishing

Abstract

Introduction: The insufficient maternal nutritional status brings risks for the newborn, and is an important parameter tightly related with perinatal morbidity and mortality, conditions that require the prioritization of the undernourished women attention before pregnancy.
Objective: Analyzing the relation between maternal undernourishing, transgestational weight and weight at birth.
Methods: A study of the 124 postpartum women with low preconceptional weight in the period from 2000 to 2009, carried out in the basic team nr. 2, of the Health Area Milanés, Matanzas. They were compared with the same number of women, who gave birth with normal weight, in the same time period. The variables taken into account were: maternal age, weight gaining during pregnancy, hemoglobin in the third semester of pregnancy and newborn weight.
Results: There it was a tight relation of the low index of preconceptional corporal mass, the insufficient weigh gaining in pregnancy, and the anemia in the third month of pregnancy with the deficient weight at birth.
Conclusions: It was showed that maternal undernourishing is a predictor of deficient weight at birth, especially if it is accompanied by anemia and the insufficient increase of the transgestational weight. It is necessary to identify the undernourished fertile-aged women before engendering, to propitiate the opportune therapeutic and nutritional attention for professional working at the primary health attention.