rural homemakers and laborers, than for women who were housewives and public/private
employees. Women who worked as agricultural laborers had a higher risk of preterm births and
LBW babies which may be due to long hours of hard physical labor in the fields. In addition,
based on the WHO 19849) report, hard physical work during pregnancy has been proven to
retard fetal growth.
The results of this study, in relation to the health and nutritional knowledge of the mother,
showed a significant association between those factors and the infant’s birth weight (p