Little information is available with respect to the contribution of prenatal and postnatal factors on growth of children under 2 years, a critical research gap. This study assessed the association of pre‐ and postnatal factors to child growth during the first 2 years of life. A health facility‐based analytical cross‐sectional study was conducted among 333 mother–child pairs in the North East region of Ghana. The primary outcome of interest was postnatal child growth as measured by mean length‐for‐age Z ‐score (LAZ) and weight‐for‐length Z ‐score (WLZ). Multivariate multiple linear regression (MMLR) analysis was used to identify the predictors. A unit increase in body mass index (BMI) in the first trimester of pregnancy positively impacted LAZ by 0.043, ( B = 0.043, 95% CI: 0.005–0.08, p = 0.03). Our MMLR analysis demonstrated that combined factors provide superior prediction of the joint centroid (combined LAZ/WLZ variance) compared to single factors. While factors like residence, delivery type, and child demographics did not impact LAZ individually, their combination in the MMLR was significant. For instance, being male, aged 6–11 months, and having normal birth weight resulted in a substantial positive impact ( B = 5.825, p = 0.04). Based on MMLR, WLZ was positively influenced by the interaction of urban residence with normal vaginal delivery ( B = 7.632, CI: 1.95–13.31, P = 0.009). The greatest synergistic positive effect was by urban residence and male sex ( B = 10.581, CI: 1.76–19.40, p = 0.02). Conversely, malaria during pregnancy significantly reduced WLZ ( B = −7.020 and 95% CI: −12.05 to −1.99, p < 0.001). Targeted interventions to improve maternal nutrition during pregnancy, promote optimal infant feeding practices, and reduce infections are thus crucial to promoting sound child growth.
Saaka et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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