CHAPTER ONE

1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
Birth weight is the weight of a baby at its birth and this is a good indicator of health when a baby is born. A baby’s weight can either be low or high. A low birth weight can be caused by the following factors: young ages, drug addiction, alcohol abuse, poor nutrition, heart disease or hypertension, insufficient prenatal care, preterm birth and slow prenatal growth rate.
According to Walton (2000), preterm birth in humans’ birth refers to the birth of a baby of less than 37 weeks gestational age. The cause for preterm birth is in many situations elusive and unknown; many factors appear to be associated with the development of preterm birth making the reduction of preterm birth a challenging proposition.
Matsui et al (2003), observed that there is no universally accepted definition of a large baby. The entity may be defined nominally by such terms as “Macrosomic”, “large for gestational age” or “oversized”. Identifying a baby as “large for gestational age” (LGA), usually defined as weighing more than the 90th percentile for gestational age and gender eliminates confounding by duration of pregnancy, but does not consider the influence of other variables such as geography and ethnicity. Babies who weigh less than 1.4kg are regarded as having a very low birth weight while babies weighing 3.6kg or more are known as having high birth weight.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM
The worrisome observation that some women have greater chance of having a low birth weight baby, easier delivery, and lesser complications during pregnancy, than others necessitated the researcher to carry out a study on this topic to enable the society know whether mothers’ age have any effect on the weight of the baby and also on the pregnancy.

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY
The study will be conducted in Abia State, it will take into consideration the ages of mothers, birth weight and birth length of their infants recorded monthly for a period of twelve (12) months i.e. from January - December 2011 in Abia State University Teaching Hospital, Aba.

1.4 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY
The study is concerned with the following:

1. To what extent the predictor variables influence infant birth weight.
2. To determine whether adjustments in the predictor variables would yield better result on infant birth weight
3. To fit an adequate regression model that shows the impact of mothers’ age and infant birth length on infant birth weight.
4. Finally, to give necessary recommendations from the findings of this research work to medical practitioners, women and the society at large.

1.5 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY
The research work attempt to evaluate the effect of mothers’ age on infants’ birth weight, as well as finding proper solution to control these effects.
To the government, medical practitioners and healthcare planners, this will help them in planning and also training more health planners in order to pre-empt many pregnancy problems. It will also help women in knowing the right age to have children and also to know things to do when they are pregnant.
Moreover, the future leaders and researchers will equally derive much from some of the suggestions and findings made herein and continue from where the researcher stopped.

1.6 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. Is there any relationship between infant birth weight, mothers’ age, and infant birth length?
2. Does infant birth weight depend on mothers’ age and infant birth length?
3. Is there any significant difference between mothers’ age, infant birth weight and length?

1.7 LIMITATIONS OF THE STUDY
This research work is limited to one year only.
The researcher encountered a lot of problems during the course of this research work which include: inadequate material for the work, time constraints and non-challant attitude of workers at Abia State University Teaching Hospital (ABSUTH), Aba.