Do mothers understand healthy eating principles for low-birth-weight infants?

Abstract

Objectives: To describe feeding patterns and mothers' perceptions of desirable feeding practices in low-birth-weight (LBW) infants after hospital discharge in England and to test for the association of inappropriate practices/perceptions with identifiable demographics. Design: Postal questionnaires from 198 mothers of LBW infants in London, Liverpool and Winchester were analysed regarding infant demographics, mothers' demographics, infant milks used, solid feeding practices and mothers' perceptions of infant feeding practices.Results: At birth, the median weight, independent of gestational age, was 1.80 kg (range 0.6-2.50 kg) and 37.1% of infants received breast milk exclusively; 83.7% were breast-fed at some stage, a practice favoured more by first-time mothers (90.2%) than multiparous mothers (73.4%) (P ¼ 0.004) as well as by mothers of higher social groups (P ¼ 0.019). The median age of solid food introduction was 17 postnatal weeks (range 8-36 weeks); the timing correlated strongly with infant birth weight (P , 0.001). A high-fibre diet and a low-fat diet were incorrectly considered important for their infants by 67.1% and 51.6% of mothers, respectively. Regarding a high-fibre diet as important was associated with being a multiparous mother (P ¼ 0.006), while regarding a low-fat diet as important was associated with low social group (P ¼ 0.018). A quarter of mothers did not consider 'plenty of calories' to be important for their infants, reflecting similar attitudes in 1990 for mothers of term infants; this incorrect attitude exhibited an association with being a first-time mother (P ¼ 0.047). Conclusions: Infant feeding practices were very variable, showing poor concordance with national and international recommendations for term infants. In selecting foods for their infants, many mothers appeared to be applying principles more appropriate to planning a healthy diet for adults. There is an urgent need to develop and implement evidence-based guidelines for feeding LBW infants after hospital discharge, with special attention given to multiparous mothers as well as mothers from lower social groups.

Zinc, copper, selenium and manganese blood levels in preterm infants

“…Only 4% of study families chose not to complete the study and their characteristics were typical of the study population. The initial human milk feeding rate (94%) among the study infants was higher than the nationally reported rate (71%) for full term infants,13 but comparable with that reported (84%) in a recent survey of low birthweight feeding practices 25. Even so, the high initial human milk feeding rate in our study may not be typical of UK preterm infants.…”

Introducing Solid Foods to Preterm Infants in Developed Countries

“…Table 1 summarizes the relevant published studies from the UK [23,24] and Italy [25] since 1994. Two of the cohorts [24,25] involved infants born preterm and one investigated infants born with low birth weight (including some infants born at term) [23].…”

“…Table 1 summarizes the relevant published studies from the UK [23,24] and Italy [25] since 1994. Two of the cohorts [24,25] involved infants born preterm and one investigated infants born with low birth weight (including some infants born at term) [23]. Despite the 1994 UK Department of Health [22] guideline recommending that solid foods commence when the infant born preterm reaches 5 kg, 18% of infants born preterm in the Italian study and 21–50% of the UK infants were introduced to solid foods prior to reaching this target weight.…”

“…Fanaro et al [25] also found that extremely- or very-low-birth-weight infants were older but lighter when solid foods were introduced when compared with low- or normal-birth weight infants. In the UK low-birth-weight cohort [23], the age of introducing solid foods was found to be associated with infant birth weight (r = –0.293, p < 0.001), whereas in the other UK preterm cohort [24] no effect of birth weight on solid food introduction timing was found. Fewtrell et al [26] has also reported data on a cohort of preterm infants (n = 228), born between 1995 and 1997 in the UK, and found that birth weight, weight at 6 weeks, and weight gain between birth and 6 weeks (corrected age) were not predictors of the age at which solid foods were introduced.…”

Complementary Feeding in Preterm Infants: A Systematic Review

“…After examining the full texts of the 40 retrieved papers, 14 were excluded, as 9 did not actually deal with CF and 5 reported data only about term infants, leading to 26 suitable studies [5,6,. Five additional papers were identified from the reference lists of included studies [33][34][35][36][37]; 31 studies were then included in the systematic review [5,6,.…”