The relationship between infant‐feeding attitudes and practices and infant weight at 2 and 4 months of age

Abstract

The use of controlling feeding practices, such as restriction, has been linked to childhood overweight/obesity. A secondary objective of the Baby‐Mine study was to explore the relationship between infant‐feeding practices/attitudes and infant weight status among low‐income, formula‐feeding mothers. Fifty‐four mothers of healthy, term infants < 3 months of age provided complete data for this objective. At 2 and 4 months of age infant anthropometry was collected and mothers completed a questionnaire assessing maternal feeding beliefs and behaviors. As an example of results to be discussed, the item “I am very careful not to feed my infant too much”, with responses linked to a 5‐point Likert scale, was used to measure maternal restriction. At 2 months of age, there was no significant relationship found between maternal response to this statement and infant birthweight (p=.616) or weight at 2 months (p=.821). However, at 4 months of age, maternal agreement with this statement was significantly positively associated with infant weight (p=0.041), and accounted for 27.9% of the variability in infant weight. Similar relationships were found when evaluating weight‐for‐length z scores. Infant‐feeding practices and attitudes may be dynamic in the first few months of life and relationships with infant weight should be carefully explored.Grant Funding Source: USDA/NIFA/AFRI Award‐2010–85215‐20663