EFFECTS OF MATERNAL NUTRITIONAL-STATUS AND MATERNAL ENERGY SUPPLEMENTATION ON LENGTH OF POSTPARTUM AMENORRHEA AMONG GUATEMALAN WOMEN

To investigate the extent to which better maternal nutrition leads to reduction in length of postpartum amenorrhea, multivariate-logistic an d linear-regression analyses were applied to data on 339 mother-infant pairs from the longitudinal Guatemalan Four Village Study, 1969-1977. Maternal triceps skinfold thickness was negatively associated with le ngth of amenorrhea when infant supplementation (a proxy for reduced su ckling) was accounted for. However, its effect was small: amenorrhea w as only 0.5 mo shorter among women at the 75th percentile than among t hose at the 25th, equivalent to less than even one additional child du ring the women's reproductive years. Maternal supplementation was not associated with length of amenorrhea when infant supplementation was c ontrolled. This is in contrast to previous studies in which breast-fee ding or infant supplementation was not controlled. These results sugge st that infant. not maternal, supplementation influences length of pos tpartum amenorrhea, and that maternal nutritional status has minimal i nfluence.