"Improved Mother Infant Feeding Interaction (MI-FI) at 12 Months With Very Early Parent Training"

"Improved Mother Infant Feeding Interaction (MI-FI) at 12 Months With Very Early Parent

Rise in childhood obesity and poor eating habits and eating problems is apparent over the last decades. Parents are at lose what the correct way to tackle these problems may be. This study examined whether professional behavioral and nutritional training of first time mothers improves feeding relationship and infants eating habits at 12 months.

From 166 first time mother-infant recruited, 128 completed the trail. Intervention group, mother-infant dyads got a month long weekly based training in small workshop groups about nutrition, feeding and parenting when infants were 4-6 months old. training was given by a highly experience pediatric dietitian and social worker. Thereafter, internet-based support continued until infants reached 12 months. The control group received customary support via municipal mother-child health clinics. Mealtime interactions were videotaped at home setting at 12 months and were evaluated using the Chatoor feeding scale by blinded (to group) viewers.

Inclusion Criteria:

• normal and healthy pregnancy
• full term delivery of infants
• infants with a normal birth weight and no health problems
• Mothers recruited had at least a high school education
• mothers lived near to or in the city (important for video taping)

Exclusion Criteria:

• Mothers with mental illness in the present or the past (such as schizophrenia, depression or an eating disorder)
• infants with chronic diseases that required specific diets (such as milk allergy) or gastrointestinal diseases (celiac disease, type 1 diabetes, Crohn's disease etc.)