Shorter mothers have shorter pregnancies

Abstract

We assessed whether maternal height was associated with gestational age in a cohort of 294 children born at term. Increasing maternal height was associated with longer pregnancy duration (p = 0.002). Stratified analyses showed that the main effect on pregnancy length appears to occur among shorter mothers (<165 cm tall), whose pregnancies were ∼0.6 and ∼0.7 weeks shorter than pregnancies of mothers 165–170 cm (p = 0.0009) and >170 cm (p = 0.0002) tall, respectively. Further, children of shorter mothers were more likely to be born early term than those of average height (p = 0.021) and taller (p = 0.0003) mothers. Maternal stature is likely to be a contributing factor influencing long-term outcomes in the offspring via its effect on pregnancy length.

Keywords::

• maternal stature
• length of gestation
• term
• height
• gestational age

Declaration of interest: This study was supported by Gravida: National Centre for Growth and Development (New Zealand). The authors have no financial or non-financial interests to declare that may be relevant to this submitted work. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish or preparation of the manuscript.