Reproductive outcome in women who lost their husbands in the course of pregnancy

Abstract

The loss of a husband in the course of pregnancy represents a serious life event that is accompanied by important psychosocial stress. We compared the length of pregnancy and the weight of the newborns in women who were widowed in the course of their pregnancy with control groups of married and unmarried women of the same parity and delivering in the same institute. The group of widowed parturients consisted of 40 women. The control group of married women included 38 cases, and the control group of unmarried women consisted of 33 cases. The results were statistically evaluated by means of variance analysis and sequential pair t-test. The average length of pregnancy was in the widowed women 279.46 ± 8.54 days, in married women 277.13 ± 10.9 days and in unmarried women 273.91 ± 16.17 days. The differences are not statistically significant. The average weight of the newborn was 3327.0 ± 484.98 g in the widowed women, 3347.11 ± 404.76 g in married women and 3068.18 ± 543.79 g in unmarried women. The weights of the newborns of widowed and married women are not different, but both are significantly higher than in the unmarried women (p < 0.05). The results do not confirm the influence of psychosocial stress due to life events occurring in the course of pregnancy upon the length of the pregnancy and the weight of the newborn.