Study finds pregnancy intentions are ‘highly fluid’ among nurses
Women nurses and nursing students of reproductive age have fluid intentions when it comes to pregnancy, according to a study presented at the ASRM Scientific Congress & Expo.
“We followed more than 10,000 premenopausal, nonpregnant women of reproductive age in a large cohort study — the Nurses’ Health Study III,” Siwen Wang, MD, a research fellow at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said during the presentation.
The researchers assessed pregnancy intention and status at baseline and then every 3 months for 11,276 participants (mean age, 32.6 years; standard deviation, 4.7 years; 92.5% married or in a domestic partnership; 65% nulliparous)..
According to the study, 898 participants (8%) said they were actively trying to conceive, 1,285 (11%) said they were not actively trying to conceive but believed they would be pregnant within a year, and 9,093 (81%) were not trying to conceive nor did they think they would be pregnant within a year.
“Women actively trying to conceive were more likely to be married or in a domestic partnership, to be nulliparous, and to have a higher education achievement than women in the other two groups,” said Wang.
Overall, approximately one in seven participants changed their intention status during follow-up.
There were 870 self-reported pregnancies within a year of the pregnancy intention assessments. The researchers asked these women to look back and report what their pregnancy intentions were when they conceived via a follow-up questionnaire administered between 20 and 25 weeks of gestation
According to the questionnaires, 45% of the women trying to conceive became pregnant, 28% of those considering pregnancy became pregnant, and 1% of those with no intentions to conceive at all became pregnant.
Also, 27% of the women who said they were actively trying to conceive at baseline but did not become pregnant said they were no longer trying nor thought they would become pregnant soon during follow-up. Among the women who reported that they thought they might become pregnant soon at baseline, the corresponding figure was 33%.
Conversely, the researchers said, 9% of the women who said they were not trying to become pregnant nor thought they would become pregnant soon at baseline later said they either were actively trying to conceive or thought they would become pregnant soon.
Further, 79% of the women who became pregnant during follow-up said they were actively trying to get pregnant when they conceived, including 50% of the women who said they were not trying to conceive at baseline.
“Pregnancy intention is highly fluid among nurses and nursing students of reproductive age, and pregnancy intention is strongly associated with incidence of pregnancy,” said Wang, adding that preconception questions are useful in identifying people who are more likely to become pregnant and who would benefit from preconception counseling.
Further, the researchers said, current approaches to assessing pregnancy intention may not fully capture this fluidity.