Effect of Midwife-Led Counseling on the Quality of Life of Women With Body Image Concerns During Postpartum

During pregnancy and postpartum, women bet more concerned and dissatisfied with their bodies. Primiparous women face more physical and mental health problems in the postpartum period.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of a midwife-based counseling program on the quality of life in women with body image concerns during postpartum.

This randomized controlled trial was conducted on 64 primiparous women with body image concerns who had been referred to the health centers in Alborz Province, Iran,in January 2019. The convenience sampling method was used for recruiting the study participants. Then, the samples were assigned to the intervention and control groups by random number table allocation. Next, the intervention group received a three-session counseling program.The data gathering questionnaire in this study included a Multi-Dimensional Body Self-Relation Questionnaire (MBSRQ) and a 36-item short-form quality of life questionnaire.  Questionnaires were completed before, immediately after, and one month after the intervention.The obtained data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, the Chi-square test, Fisher exact test, and repeated measures test.

The mean ±SD age of the study participants was 26.4 ±5.4 years. Also, 94%of the samples had wanted pregnancy, 54%had a vaginal delivery,and 59.4%were overweight.There was no statistically significant difference between the control and intervention groups before the intervention regarding their demographic characteristics. The results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) with repeated measures test indicated that the length of time affected the total scores of multi-dimensional body self-relation (P= 0.001). Also, the repeated measures ANOVA results showed that time significantly impacted the quality of life score (P= 0.001).

The study results showed that a midwife-led counseling program could affect the score of quality of life in women with body image concerns in postpartum.