Pregnant women’s knowledge about nutritional requirements during pregnancy

Abstract

Introduction: Since several decades ago, nutrition and nourishment problems of Latino America population have been a topic to investigate, especially, in the health of the bond mother & child. A mother well nourished in quality and quantity, is able to provide enough energy to protect the fetus; in order to achieve that, both prenatal care and a control of nutritional education are essential.

Objective: Explore the knowledge of low risk pregnant women who attend a prenatal visit to learn about the nutritional requirements during pregnancy.

Methodology: Fifty low risk pregnant women eligible for convenience were surveyed when attended a prenatal visit with a mother & child nurse specialist. After the visit and under informed consent, it was applied a designed, exprofesso questionnaire to collect data about social and demographic characteristics and knowledge of nutritional requirements during the pregnancy period. Data were analyzed with descriptive statistics.

Results: The most of surveyed women (93%) is within reproductive age between 18 and 31 years old; 75% of them have an elementary or middle school educational background, and a half of them, has a monthly income of two thousand pesos. Related to the nutritional requirements that should be included within the nourishment, such as iron and fiber, more than 90% of people referred having that knowledge; in contrast, 50% said knowing about the necessity to consume calcium, proteins, and enough amounts of fluids. In general, only 63% of pregnant women have sufficient knowledge about such nutritional requirements.

Discussion: Even though a little more of a half of pregnant women have enough knowledge, the rest of women do not have it. Af- terwards, it should be analyzed the relation withage,educational level, income, and number of pregnancies among other factors.