Investigation of the relationship between prenatal attachment and distress during pregnancy

This study was conducted as a cross-sectional and descriptive study in order to determine the relationship between prenatal attachment and distress during pregnancy. The study was conducted with 207 pregnant women in the second and third trimesters who were admitted to the Obstetrics and Gynecology outpatient clinic of Artvin State Hospital between April and July 2020. The data were collected through face-to-face interviews with the "Personal Information Form", "Tilburg Pregnancy Distress Scale (TPDS)" and "Prenatal Attachment Inventory (PAI)". SPSS (Statistical Package for Social Sciences for Windows 22.0) program was used to analyze the data. The results were evaluated at 95% confidence intervals and p <0.05 significance level. 37.7% of the pregnant women were in the 25-29 age range. It was found that the average PAI scores were 60.54±10.83, the mean PAI scores increased as the level of education increased, and the mean PAI scores decreased as the duration of marriage, the number of births and pregnancy increased. When the average PAI scores were examined, it was found that working women were higher than non-working women, primigravidas were higher than multigravidas, and planned and deliberate pregnancies were higher than unplanned and unwanted pregnancies. It was found that the total mean score of the pregnant women was 26.44±6.32. In addition to unemployed pregnant women, it was found that as the age, duration of marriage, the number of births and pregnancy and the number of living children of pregnant women increased, the total TPDS mean score increased. It was also observed that as the level of education increased, the level of distress decreased in the sub-dimension of partner engagement, and the mean TPDS score was higher for primigravidas compared to multigravidas. As a result, it was found that the higher the PAI mean score, the lower the mean TPDS mean. Keywords: Pregnancy, prenatal attachment, distress, PAI, TPDS