Maternal Recall of Birthweight and Birth Size in Entebbe, Uganda

Abstract

To assess the reliability of maternally recalled birthweight and size in Entebbe, Uganda.methodsThe study population comprised 404 mothers, who were participants in the Entebbe Motherand Baby Study (EMaBS). Mothers were recruited to EMaBS during antenatal care, maternal charac-teristics were recorded during pregnancy, and birthweight was recorded at delivery. Four to seven yearsafter delivery, mothers were asked to recall the child’s birthweight and size. Their responses werecompared with the birthweight recorded in the EMaBS database.resultsOf 404 interviewed mothers, 303 (75%) were able to give an estimate of birthweight and for265 of these EMaBS data on recorded birthweights were available. Women who were educated andwhose children had low birth order were more likely to be able to give an estimate: 37 (14%) recalled theexact recorded birthweight; a further 52 (20%) were accurate to within 0.1 kg of the recordedweight. On average, mothers overestimated birthweight by 0.06 kg (95% CI: 0.00–0.13 kg,P= 0.04).Recalled and recorded birthweights showed moderate agreement with an intraclass correlation coefficient of0.64. Four hundered mothers gave an estimate of birth size: the sensitivity and specificity of recalled birth sizefor classifying low birthweight were 76% (95% CI: 50–93%) and 70% (95% CI: 65–75%), respectively.conclusionsMothers’ recall of birthweight was not precise but in absence of other data, recall ofbirthweight and size may have some value in epidemiological studies in these settings.