More and more has been learned about child obesity in the past few decades. What if we could put all the known risk factors together to get a sense of a child's overall risk of being overweight? We can.

Many factors influence individuals' weight. The same is true for children. Preventing obesity is easier when we know what factors increase a baby's risk of becoming overweight.

If you're thinking of lighting up while a little one kicks in your tummy, this might stop you. Do you want an overweight child?

Being overweight or obese during pregnancy can put women at a higher risk for gestational diabetes, which increases the risk of birth complications.

Being obese and pregnant can carry a range of risks to the mother during pregnancy, but it also has consequences for her baby, in the short-term and the long-term.

Research is uncovering more and more about possible health risks to babies if their mothers are obese during pregnancy. Another one for the list: being born with low iron levels.

Shedding pounds before getting pregnant can reduce a number of health risks - but it may also add a few points to your child's reading and math scores. A recent study has found a link between a mother's weight before pregnancy and their children's cognitive skills: obese women's children score lower on math and reading tests when they were 5 to 7 years old. Get to a healthy weight before becoming pregnant. Lead author Rika Tanda , a nursing doctoral candidate at Ohio State University, and colleagues wanted to investigate potential connections between a mother's pre-pregnancy ob...

If money is always low and stress or depression is always high, moms may be overfeeding their babies - and thereby increasing their kids' risks of obesity. A recent unpublished study being presented at a conference found that the unhealthy practice of adding cereal to babies' bottles tends to occur more often among low-income mothers who are single and/or showing symptoms of depression or high stress. Don't add cereal to your baby's bottle. Lead author Candice Taylor Lucas, MD, a an associate professor of pediatrics at New York University School of Medicine and Bellevue Hospital...

It may not just be chicken nuggets and french fries adding too much weight to children's waistlines. The very air pregnant women breathe might play a small role too.