CFD 1220 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Prenatal Vitamins, Prenatal Care, Birth Weight
11 Jun 2018
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Chapter 5:
Becoming Parents and Parenting Infants and Toddlers
Optimizing the Chances of Having Healthy Babies
• Avoid teratogens during pregnancy
o Factors that can cause prenatal harm (viruses, drugs, chemicals, stressors,
environmental hazards)
▪ Examples: nicotine, caffeine, and drugs
▪ Nicotine is the most common teratogen exposure
Nutrition and Prenatal Care
• Importance of maintaining a nutritious diet throughout pregnancy:
o Maternal malnutrition is correlated with low birth weight
o Folic acid deficiency is related to neural tube damage
o A balanced diet should be supplemented with prenatal vitamins
▪ Begin before pregnancy if planning to get pregnant and continue
afterward if breastfeeding
• Early prenatal care is very important
o Without prenatal care, women are three times more likely to have low-birth-
weight infants
Poverty as a Risk Factor for Low Birth-Weight Infants
• Poverty is part of the reason for differences in birth weight and infant survival between
nations and within the United States
• Poor women are more likely to be ill, malnourished, teenaged, and stressed
• Poor mothers are more likely to:
o Receive late or inadequate prenatal care,
o Breathe polluted air,
o Live in overcrowded conditions,
o Move from place to place,
o Ingest unhealthy substances from psychoactive drugs to spoiled food
Birth and Newborns
• Birth is a significant event in the lives of families everywhere
• The primary goal of expectant parents is to have full-term, healthy babies
• The majority of babies are carried to full gestational term and are born healthy
• There is, however, a major difference in the survival rates of infants born in
industrialized and non-industrialized countries
o Parents in developing countries are at risk are more likely to suffer the loss of
their infants shortly after birth than are parents in industrialized countries
Features of Infant Care in Traditional Cultures
• Infant care in traditional cultures includes intensive physical nurturance of the infant,
including:
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