Maternal postpartum distress and childhood overweight.
OBJECTIVE
We investigated associations between maternal postpartum distress covering anxiety, depression and stress and childhood overweight.


METHODS
We performed a prospective cohort study, including 21,121 mother-child-dyads from the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC). Maternal distress was measured 6 months postpartum by 9 items covering anxiety, depression and stress. Outcome was childhood overweight at 7-years-of age. Multiple logistic regression analyses were performed and information on maternal age, socioeconomic status, pre-pregnancy BMI, gestational weight gain, parity, smoking during pregnancy, paternal BMI, birth weight, gestational age at birth, sex, breastfeeding and finally infant weight at 5 and 12 month were included in the analyses.


RESULTS
We found, that postpartum distress was not associated with childhood risk of overweight, OR 1.00, 95%CI [0.98-1.02]. Neither was anxiety, depression, or stress exposure, separately. There were no significant differences between the genders. Adjustment for potential confounders did not alter the results.


CONCLUSIONS
Maternal postpartum distress is apparently not an independent risk factor for childhood overweight at 7-years-of-age. However, we can confirm previous findings of perinatal determinants as high maternal pre-pregnancy BMI, and smoking during pregnancy being risk factors for childhood overweight.
Ajslev
Teresa A
TA
Institute of Preventive Medicine, Copenhagen University Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark. ta@ipm.regionh.dk
Andersen
Camilla S
CS
Ingstrup
Katja G
KG
Nohr
Ellen A
EA
Sørensen
Thorkild I A
TI
D015992:Body Mass Index; D002648:Child; D003718:Denmark / Q000453:epidemiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D050177:Overweight / Q000453:epidemiology*; D049590:Postpartum Period / Q000523:psychology*; D011247:Pregnancy; D015995:Prevalence; D011446:Prospective Studies; D012307:Risk Factors; D013315:Stress, Psychological