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Maternal shoe size and infant birth weight: correlation or fiction?
Mark B Stephens1, Debra A Manning, Amy Arnold-Canuso
1Department of Family Medicine, Naval Hospital Camp Lejeune, NC 28547, USA. mbstephens@nhcl.med.navy.mil
Objective:
To determine whether maternal prepregnancy shoe size can be used to reliably predict infant birth weight.
Method:
This is a cross-sectional study of 111 consecutive patients admitted to the maternity care unit of a small community hospital. Data collected included prepregnancy height, maternal weight, maternal shoe size, maternal age, gravidity, parity, ethnicity, and method of delivery. Infant birth weight was recorded within the first 2 hours of life.
Results:
There was no correlation between maternal shoe size and birth weight (r = 0.01; P = NS). There was no correlation between shoe size and birth weight when corrected for parity and ethnicity.
Conclusion:
There is no correlation between maternal shoe and infant birth weight. This anthropometric measure should not be used to estimate infant birth weight.
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