The relationship of the inter-pregnancy interval with adverse birth outcomes

الملخص EN

Background : The inter-pregnancy interval is the time between the last delivery and conception of the current pregnancy.

Also, known as birth spacing, Aim : The study aimed to assess the relationship between inter-pregnancy interval and adverse birth outcomes.

Material and Methods : A descriptive study design was consist of (200) women selected by purposive sampling technique.

Data collected during the period from 10th of November-2013 to 13th of April-2014.

The setting of the study was carried out in hospitals of Mosul city (AL-Khansa Teaching and AL-Batool Teaching).

Data were collected with a structured questionnaire.

This questionnaire consist of four parts, part one included demographic data and characteristics of the women included (Age, Educational level, Resident, Occupation, Gestational age, Prenatal care visits and Maternal illness during pregnancy), part two included intervals of inter-pregnancy that divided into months, part three included the reasons for not using family planning, part four included the most common adverse birth outcomes that occur for women and their babies after delivery.

The validity of the questionnaire was examined by (10) experts and reliability of the questionnaire was (0.82).

Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics inferential statistical.

Results : The newborn with low birth weight, the risk was higher among mothers with a short interpregnancy interval (27 %), the maternal characteristics of the sample demonstrates that according to age, the highest percentage was of the study age group (21-25) year that was (37 %), As regard the resident, about (62 %) of the sample was rural, And more than half of the samples (59.5 %) were not visited a specialized maternal health care during their pregnancy period.

With regard the maternal illness during pregnancy and the highest percentage was (42 %) in anemia., the main reasons for not using birth control at the time of conception among mothers was they thought will not get to have a pregnancy at this time (49 %).

Conclusion : short inter-pregnancy intervals (three to six) months are associated with increased risks of maternal : anemia, gestational hypertension, low birth weight, preterm delivery and small for gestation age.

Recommendations : The researchers recommended that should be continued efforts to prevent repeat pregnancies among teenagers and interventions to lower short birth spacing among young adult mothers deserve high priority.

The women should be succeeding in influencing and achieving an optimal birth spacing of at least eighteen to twenty four months.