Common Physical Complaints During Pregnancy

INTRODUCTION: This study was descriptively designed to detect the common physical complaints of the woman experienced during pregnancy.
METHODS: The study was carried out between April 2014 and December 2014 in State Research Hospital pregnancy policlinic in İstanbul. The universe of the study consists of all the pregnant women applying to State Researh Hospital pregnancy policlinic and the sampling group consists of 330 pregnant women randomly chosen from the universe of the study. In order to collect data in the study, a questionnaire developed by the researcher in line with the literature was used. The data were collected by means of face to face interview technique. In the analysis of the data, pearson Chi-square, mean, standart deviation, values and percent were used.
RESULTS: The means age of women who attend to research 27.90 ± 5.36 years, weeks of pregnancy 30.32 ± 8.45 weeks, undergraduate
and master degree education level (29.1%), the first pregnany (55%) and planned pregnancy (89.1%) was determined.
While heartburn (30.9%), backache (41.5%), weakness and fatigue (30.9%), frequent urining (62.4%), leucorrhoea (37.3%), and pyrosis (28.5%) were the most frequent complaints, hot flush (27.9%), increased appetite (28.8%) and leg cramps (31.2%) were sometimes experienced by pregnant women. It has been found that the rate of never experiencing of complaints such as hemorrhoids (76.7%), appetite reduction (50.6%) and vomiting (60.6%) was very high among pregnant.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: It is recommended that health workers, especially nurses and midwiferies, should inform of the pregnant women about the common complaints during the antenatal checkups, teach them complaints which experienced by the pregnat are part of the normal process of pregnancy, and coping strategy.