Abstract:
Back ground: Adequate maternal dietary practices play important roles in
determining the long-term health and nutritional status of both the mother and her
growing fetus. Poor dietary practices may result in increased risk of having a preterm
birth, low birth-weight, intrauterine growth retardations, and facing with several
threats to mothers’ health and life. There was no sufficient data on assessment of
dietary practices and associated factors during pregnancy in this study area.
Objective: To assess the optimal dietary practices and associated factors among
pregnant mothers in Dedo woreda, Jimma zone, Oromiya region, Ethiopia.
Method: Community based cross-sectional study was conducted from April 01 to
May 01/2021. Simple random sampling technique was applied to selected 12 kebeles
out of total 36 kebeles. The data were collected by using pretested questionnaire that
prepared in English and translated to Afan Oromo. The data were also entered SPSS
windows versions 23.0. Both Bivariate and multivariable logistic regression were
used to determine factors associated with dietary practice at p-value of <0.05.
RESULTS: The prevalence of optimal dietary practice was found to be 27.9%.
Pregnant mothers who had nutrition information (AOR: 2.183 with 95%CI of 1.280,
3.723), mothers with family size of 3-4/three to four (AOR: 0.451with 95%CI of
0.204, 0.994), pregnant mothers whose age in the range of 27-35 year (AOR: 0.050
with 95%CI of 0.024, 0.104) and having daily laborer husbands (AOR: 0.192 with
95%CI, 0.042, 0.889) were significantly associated with dietary feeding practice.
CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATION: The Dietary practice of the
pregnant mothers in the study area was suboptimal. The factors associated with
dietary practice were nutrition information, family size, age of pregnant mother and
mother’s husband occupation. Awareness should be created on maternal nutrition
during pregnancy by the governmental and concerned non-governmental bodies.
