Table 2 summarizes the different factors which might have influenced LBW outcomes. Most
first-born children were LBW (60.9%), whereas 39.1% of second children were. LBW prevalence
was 6.8% among those mothers who had a family history of LBW babies, while it was 93.2%
of those mothers who never had such a family history. We determined the level of knowledge
and practice on different issues involving LBW babies, their causes and nutritional roles using
a set of questions for each component. The knowledgeability of mothers having scores of 75%
or more for giving the correct answers to knowledge related questions was ranked as ‘adequate’,
while below 75% were regarded as ‘inadequate’. Accordingly, we found that only 27.2% of
all mothers had adequate knowledge. As for the level of practicing healthy behavior during
pregnancy, we determined that only 48.9% of mothers with LBW babies had adequate practice,
in contrast to 89.4% of mothers of NBW babies. Indeed, few mothers of LBW babies were in
good health (69.8%) in comparison to mothers of NBW babies (88.7%).