The mother's age is a matter to consider when conceiving a baby. It could also be when it comes to knowing what the size of the future child will be. A study conducted in Holland indicates that older women are more likely than younger women to have bigger babies.
The team of researchers, from the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam, studied 8,568 women in the Netherlands who had a baby between 2002 and 2006, with an average weight of 3.5 kilograms.
The authors defined that a "small" baby would be the one weighing 2.5 kilograms or less, while a "large" baby would weigh 4.5 kg or more. In the study, one in 20 newborns was small and one in 20 was large.
Unlike women aged 30 to 35, mothers under 25 tended to have small babies: 4% of those aged 30 to 35 had a small baby, compared with 7% in the group under 20 years.
On the other hand, older mothers were more likely to have large babies, according to the "British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology". This risk increased from 3% in younger mothers to 6% in those aged 30 to 35 and rose to 10% in those over 40.
However, the figures could increase, given that Western women are putting off motherhood. Previous studies indicate that babies who grow less than expected in the womb are at greater risk of having problems such as diabetes or heart disease in adulthood, while older babies are more likely to be obese adults.
Analyzing the study data, it is observed that the relationship between maternal age and the risk of having a small baby in the group of young women was mainly due to social factors (ethnicity, education and previous births) and lifestyle (feeding , smoking and alcohol consumption).
But none of those factors explained why the risk of having a large baby grew in older women. They could influence female organic factors, but they are still ignored. According to the researchers, more studies are needed to know the effects of maternal age on the weight of babies.
At the moment, the relationship between mothers over 35 years old and babies born large, with the consequent risk of obesity in the future, although I do not think it is a determining factor. Surely you know cases of babies who were born large and now more than fat are tall and robust.
