Abstract:

Background: The utilization of Antenatal care from a trained provider is important to monitor the pregnancy and to reduce morbidity and mortality risks for the mother and child during pregnancy and delivery. Early booking with at-least four visits throughout the pregnancy has an advantage for proper pregnancy information sharing, pregnancy monitoring and reduce the risk of developing complications.

Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the Adherence level to ANC visits and pregnancy related complications faced by postnatal mothers during their pregnancy period at BMC.

Methods: A cross-sectional based study was conducted among 184 postnatal mothers at BMC from June 2022. Data were collected using a self-administered questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS software version 20.1. Results were summarized in frequencies, percentages, and presented using tables or figures and ethical issues were sorted and completed with respective authorities.

Results: From the sample of 184, showed that 54.3% (100) developed pregnancy related complications while 46% (84) of them did not, while 23.2% had good adhered to ANC with 4-8visits and 79.4% had poor adhered to ANC with 1-3 visits. The most common pregnancy complications was pregnancy induced hypertension where 25% (46) had pregnancy induced hypertension. The factor that predict the adherence of four antenatal visits were age, marital status, occupation, residence, education, ANC satisfactions, parity and spouse whereas there was a significant association between antenatal care services and satisfaction of the services.(p-value=0.009).

Conclusions: Majority of postnatal mothers start seeking ANC at late time (>16 weeks) and those who had poor adherence to ANC developed complications during their pregnancy period. More than half of the respondents developed complications where many of them were women aged less than 25 years, married, peasant and multiparty .Received complete ANC visit at appropriate time significantly reduce the risk of developing complications. Therefore our findings point to the important implications of developing interventions that build on institutional practice of providing a tested set of ANC guidelines that are followed completely by health care provider .Also Educational intervention are critical to safe motherhood initiatives, health provider must fully use the educational opportunity in antenatal care.