Objective: To determine the relationship between unintended pregnancy and neonatal weight
of babies.
Methodology: It was a case-control study which included 114 women who were admitted in the
post partum of a Maternity hospital in Kermanshah city in Iran. A questionnaire was used to
gather the data and determine the unintended and intended pregnancies as case and control
groups. The questionnaire consisted of variables such as age, mothers’ education level, parity,
number of children and so on; also, an information form was utilized to collect the neonatal
data such weight, height and sex. All the collected data was analyzed by Chi-Square, Fishers’
Exact test and Odds Ratio.
Results: The findings showed that all participants were housewives, 27.3% were illiterate,
46.4% had unintended pregnancies (case group). There were not significant differences between
two groups in mothers’ educational level and neonatal weights and heights.
Conclusion: Among the study subjects approximately half had unintended pregnancies, but
there was no relationship between neonatal/newborn weight and unintended pregnancy. It
seems, the health services have some defects about counseling and instruction of emergency
contraceptions, conversely they can detect the unintended pregnancies very well and present
the perfect counseling and instruction during prenatal care. It is recommended to study
complications of unwanted pregnancies in a large study to confirm our observations.