ABSTRACT

 Maternal nutritional knowledge and practices during pregnancy play crucial roles in determining the nutritional status as well as long-term health of both the mother and her growing fetus. Poor nutritional knowledge and practices during pregnancy may result in conditions such as increased rates of stillbirths, low-birth weight, maternal and prenatal death. This study was aimed at assessing nutritional knowledge, practice and nutritional status among expectant mothers in Federal Medical Centre, Umuahia, Abia State. The population of the study was made up of all the expectant mothers registered for antenatal in Federal Medical Center, Umuahia South Local Government Area, Abia State from September to November 2019, which summed up to 1175, 1232 and 1083 respectively. A multi-stage random sampling technique was employed in this study, using balloting, systematic sampling was used to select the subjects from each class, making the sample size to be 309 pregnant mothers. A structured questionnaire was used for data collection. Anthropometric indices such as weight and height, haemoglobin status, mid upper arm circumference as well as urinalysis of the respondents were collected. Data collected were analysed frequencies, percentages and Pearson correlation. Findings revealed that 9.7% of the respondents were below 18 years of age, 48.9% were within the age range of 19-25 years, 2 1.7%, 1 8.4% and 1.3% were within the age ranges of 26-32, 33-39, and above 50 years of age respectively. The study showed encouraging result that most (70.6%) of the pregnant women were within the suitable child bearing age of 19 - 32 years. Majority of the respondents (92.9%) were of Christian religion, 75.4% were married, 19.1% were single, 4.9% were divorced, while 0.6% were widowed. 57.6% of the respondents had household size of 1-3, while 37.5%, and 4.5% had household size within the range of 4-6 and 7-9 persons respectively. 46.0% of the respondents were traders, 3 1 .7%, 11 .3%, 10.0% and 1.0% were civil servants, farmers, unemployed, and artisans respectively. Majority (41.4%) of the respondents were in their third trimester, while 39.5% and 19.1% were in their first and second trirnesters of pregnancy respectively. Also, majority of the respondents (67.0%) had only one pregnancy, 33.0% had pregnancies of above 1 with 48.5% of the respondents having 0 - I children, 39.5% having children within the iiurnber of 2 - 3, 12.0% having more than 3 children. 71.8% of the respondents had pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI) within the normal range of 18.5 - 24.9kg/rn2, 12.6% were over-weighted (BMI of 25.0-29.9), 9.4% were underweighted (BMI < 18) while 6.1% of the respondents had BMI of 30 and >30. Results of the nutritional knowledge of the respondents showed that about 82.6% of the pregnant women in the study had good nutritional knowledge while only about 17.4% had poor knowledge about nutrition. Result of the nutritional practice of the respondents showed that 85.5% had good nutritional practices while about 14.5% of the respondents had poor nutritional practices. The food frequency table showed high intake of roots and tubers, cereals and grains, meat/fish and poultry, pork, milk and milk products, fats and oils, fruits and vegetables. Results of the nutritional status of the respondents showed that about 79.3% of the pregnant women in the study had good nutritional status while only about 20.7% had poor nutritional status. There was a significant (p