An investigation of pregnant women's health monitoring perceptions, maternity expectations, happiness, and prenatal attachment levels

ABSTRACT An Investigation of Pregnant Women's Health Monitoring Perceptions, Maternity Expectations, Happiness, and Prenatal Attachment Levels This study aims to investigate pregnant women's health monitoring perceptions, maternity expectations, happiness and prenatal attachment levels. This descriptive and cross-sectional study was conducted between the 15th of March 2020 and the 15th of March 2021. The target population included pregnant women who applied to Gaziantep Cengiz Gökçek Maternity and Children Hospital polyclinic, and the sample included 393 pregnant women. Ethics committee approval, hospital's permission and participants' informed consent was obtained for the study. Data were collected through the Socio-demographic Form, Fetal Health Monitoring Focus Scale, Antenatal Attachment Inventory, the Mutual Happiness Scale, and Antenatal Maternal Expectations Scale. Data were analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics 24 package program. Statistical significance was taken p<0,05. The average age of the pregnant women was 27,33±5,90 years, 31,8% had an education level of primary school or below, 69,0% had a planned pregnancy, and 47.1% felt anxious about labour. A positive relationship was detected between the antenatal maternal expectations total score and mutual happiness, unrealistic positive expectation, and unrealistic negative expectation scores, low/high/medium-level and statistically significant relationship respectively. A positive, weak, and statistically significant relationship was reported between the attachment inventory and mutual happiness, unrealistic positive expectation, unrealistic negative expectation and antenatal maternal expectations total scores. A positive, medium-level and statistically significant relationship was found between Fetal Health monitoring total scores and the scores of intrinsic, chance-related, and depended on strong values. The findings of this study revealed a statistically significant relationship between pregnant women's health monitoring perceptions, maternity expectations, happiness and prenatal attachment levels. Keywords: Pregnant women, monitoring perception, mutual happiness, attachment, maternity expectation