Growing Up in Ireland: National longitudinal Study of Children - Maternal Health Behaviours and Child Growth in Infancy

The research literature on the effects of maternal environment, constitution and lifestyle on the child’s birth-weight and both acute and chronic illness in infancy is now very well developed. There is a smaller but growing literature on the effects of prenatal and early life on the child’s long-term health and wellbeing. This report examines maternal use of cigarettes and consumption of alcohol during pregnancy and whether the child is breastfed and for how long. The report then examines the role of smoking and alcohol consumption, among other factors, on birth-weight and on the pattern of growth in measured child weight from birth to nine months of age. The Growing Up in Ireland project is following the development of two cohorts of children first visited in 2007/8. The first wave of the project collected data on 11,134 children aged nine months and their parents (the Infant Cohort) and 8,568 children aged nine years (the Child Cohort), their parents, teachers and carers. In this report, the data from the first wave of the Infant Cohort are used to provide analyses of maternal health behaviours and patterns of child growth in infancy.