A study of knowledge, attitude and practice regarding child birth spacing and its methods among the antenatal women of rural Thoothukudi, Tamil Nadu

Abstract

Background: India is the second highest populated country in the world with 1.32 billion populations and will reach 1.53 billion by next 30 years. The birth spacing is defined as the time interval between two births. While knowledge of birth spacing has reached substantial levels, conversion of this knowledge into a change in attitude and practicing of birth spacing appears lagged and challenged. Our objective was to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of various birth spacing methods among the antenatal women of rural Thoothukudi.Methods: A descriptive cross sectional study was conducted among antenatal women who came for their routine antenatal checkup at the PHCs. Data was collected with a pre-tested, semi-structured questionnaire and analysed. Results were expressed in percentages and proportions.Results: Out of 120 antenatal women participated in the study, majority (82.5%) had knowledge about ideal spacing period of 2 to 3 years. But majority of the women (79.20%) did not practice any of the birth spacing methods and only 20.80% women were actually practicing some of the birth spacing methods and the common method was Copper-T. The common reason for not adopting and discontinuance of contraceptive method is fear of its adverse effects (31%).Conclusions: The study results revealed that most of the women were aware that birth spacing between pregnancies is important and knew only about Cu-T. Also they knew that the ideal spacing interval should be 3 years. Thus Health Education Programmes are a must to enhance the knowledge of antenatal women about birth spacing methods.