Adolescent coitus and infant birthweight.

ABSTRACT

PIP: The subjects for this study are 99 (consecutive) adolescents who received prenatal care in the Rochester Adolescent Maternity Project (RAMP) between August 1980 and December 1981 and their infants. Data was collected from semi-structured interviews about the adolsecents' coital activitiy during pregnancy and the interval between last coitus and delivery. Demographic, obstetric and medical data were collected from each subject's chart. Neonatal data included birthweight and gestational age. T-tests, chi-square and multivariate analyses were performed. Results indicate that 79% of the study population reported coitus during pregnancy. 71% of these respondents stated that coitus occurred within 90 days of delivery. There was a significant difference between the mean birthweight and the mean gestational age of infants of mothers who reported coitus within 90 days of delivery compared to the infants of mothers who reported no coitus within 90 days of delivery. On multivariate analysis, prepregnancy weight (r=.380) and weight gain during pregnancy (r=.327) were both significantly correlated with birthweight. 39% of the variance in birthweight was explained by maternal factors alone, but only 1.0% of the variance in birthweight was accounted for by the interval between last coitus and delivery. As found by others, prepregnancy weight, weight gain during pregnancy, smoking frequency, and race were the major maternal factors accounting for the variance in birthweight. It is concluded that coitus alone during pregnancy in adolescents does not account for a significant amount of the variance in infant birthweight.