The early COVID-19 pandemic period and associated gestational weight gain.

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate if gestational weight gain was altered during the early COVID-19 pandemic period.

Methods: This a retrospective cohort study evaluating gestational weight gain among individuals delivering during the early COVID-19 pandemic epoch (March 10-December 31, 2020) compared to temporally matched pre-pandemic (matched months in 2018 and 2019) controls using electronic medical record data from a large tertiary care hospital. The primary outcome was gestational weight gain defined as a categorical measure representing below, meeting, or above Institute of Medicine (IOM) criteria with further adjustment for gestational age at delivery. The early-pandemic exposure group was also categorized by gestational age at the start period (<14 weeks' and 14-20 weeks') to assess if duration of exposure affected gestational weight gain risks with the use of multinominal logistic regression.

Results: Among 5,377 individuals 3,619 (67.3 %) and 1,758 (32.7 %) were in the pre and early pandemic epochs respectively. Overall, 934 (17.4 %) individuals gained below recommended, 1,280 (23.8 %) met recommendations, and 3,163 (58.8 %) gained above IOM recommended gestational weight gain. Compared to the pre-pandemic epoch, the early pandemic period was not associated with weight gain below (OR 1.06, 95 % Cl 0.89-1.27) or above (OR 1.03, 95 % Cl 0.89-1.19) IOM recommendations. This was also true when the early pandemic group was stratified based on gestational age at the start of the early pandemic period (<14 weeks' and 14-20 weeks').

Conclusions: This study demonstrated no significant difference in maternal weight gain between pre and early COVID-19 pandemic periods.