Relationship between maternal health behavior and physical growth pattern of ‎children under one year referred to health departments of Rasht city

Introduction: Physical growth in infants is the most important health indicator. In fact many &lrm;factors influence infants&rsquo; physical growth. Because of complete dependence of infants to their &lrm;mothers and role of mother care and health behavior is important for health promotion.&lrm; Objective: This research is a correlational descriptive study done with the aim of determining &lrm;relationship between maternal health behaviors with physical growth pattern in children under &lrm;one year.&lrm; &nbsp;Methods: Data collection tool was a questionnaire including two sections: the first part &lrm;included demographic characteristics of mother and child, and second part included three &lrm;sections for measurement of health behavior about nutrition, sleep and preventing disease in &lrm;child under one year. Information related health behavior was completed with reading &lrm;questionnaire and measurement of physical growth was Recorded from file. &lrm;&rlm;362&rlm;&lrm; mother and &lrm;their children under one year were selected randomly. &lrm; Result: Research finding about physical growth of child less than one year showed that most &lrm;of them (&lrm;&rlm;57.5%&rlm;&lrm;) had unfavorable physical growth. Also the results about health preventing &lrm;indicated most of (&lrm;&rlm;57.7%&rlm;&lrm;) sample had suitable health behavior and about sleep most of (&lrm;&rlm;88.7%&rlm;&lrm;) &lrm;them have unsuitable health behaviors. Result showed that there was significant correlation &lrm;between mother&rsquo;s health behavior in all three domains and child physical growth according to &lrm;mother and child&rsquo;s demographic characteristics (p<&lrm;&rlm;0/001&rlm;&lrm;).&lrm; &nbsp;Conclusion: Results showed that most of the mothers of childern had suitable health &lrm;behavior about children&rsquo;s nutrition (&lrm;&rlm;69.2%&rlm;&lrm;) sleep (&lrm;&rlm;19.3%&rlm;&lrm;), and prevention of disease (&lrm;&rlm;86.5%&rlm;&lrm;).And &lrm;also children had favorable physical growth and there was a significant correlation between &lrm;maternal health behavior and child physical growth pattern (p<&lrm;&rlm;0.001&rlm;&lrm;).&lrm;