Abstract:

Maternal obesity hurts pregnancy and pregnancy outcomes through increased morbidities in the antenatal period, increased intrapartum interventions and post-partum complications. This study was undertaken to determine the prevalence and risk factors for obesity among pregnant women managed at a Pub lic Tertiary Health Facility, in Southwest, Nigeria. This study is a hospital-based cross-sectional study carried out among 160 pregnant women at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, Federal Medical Centre, Abeokuta who booked in the first half of pregnancy at the hospital and who presented in labour. Booking weights and heights were extracted from the case note and were used to calculate the body mass index (BMI) which was thereafter classified based on the World Health Organization (WHO) criteria. The labour of respondents was monitored closely, ethical approval was gotten from the Hospital’s Health Research and Ethics Board and written informed consent was taken from patients. Data was obtained using a semi-structured questionnaire and analyzed using IBM SPSS version 23. P-value <0.05 was taken as significant. The prevalence of maternal obesity was 24.4% and the risk factors found by this study that were statistically significant (P<0.05) with obesity are advanced maternal age, increasing parity and self-reported satisfactory income. In conclusion, a quarter of pregnant women in this study were obese and some of its risk factors have been identified. It is recommended that awareness and health education programmes especially as regards the negative effects of obesity and strategies to help pregnant women maintain a normal weight should be intensified at the antenatal clinics.

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