ABSTRACT
Introduction: Unwanted pregnancy imposes great psychological pressure on women.The aim of this paper is to compare quality of life of in women withwanted andunwanted pregnancy, from 3rd trimester of pregnancy to postpartum
Methods and materials: This longitudinal study was conducted in 10 urban health centers of Shahroud city, in 2010. There were 43 women with unwanted pregnancy among 358 pregnant women. In order to exclude the selection bias, all pregnant women were included in the study. Inclusion criteria were being in the third trimester of pregnancy and giving birth to a healthy baby. Exclusion criteria were fetal or infant death during the period of the study. WHO-Quality of life questionnaire was filled out in the third trimester of pregnancy and 8 weeks after delivery. Statistical analysis was done by SPSS version 18 using mann witney-u, wilcoxon, chi-square and multiple regression analysis
Results: Although there was no significant difference between the scores of QOL of women with wanted and unwanted pregnancy in third trimester of pregnancy, women with unwanted pregnancy had lower score in perceived overall health [p=0.03] and social domain [p=0.042] than wanted pregnancy group in postpartum periods. Also, means of scores of physical and social domains of QOL in women with wanted pregnancy has improved from pregnancy to postpartum while there was no change in unwanted group and even their perceived overall health declined in the postpartum [p=0.009]. Multiple regression analyses showed that unwanted pregnancy was a predictor of maternal QOL in postpartum.[]
Conclusion: Designing interventions to improve QOL of women with unwanted pregnancy is recommended