Knowledge and Practice of Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises Among Pregnant Women in Enugu Metropolis, Nigeria

Background: Safe maternity and enhanced neonatal outcomes depend on suitable and comprehensive antenatal program for pregnant mothers. This makes it imperative to adopt strategies aimed at ensuring positive antenatal and postnatal experience for women. To this end, many health care organizations and antenatal clinics teach pregnant women pelvic floor muscle exercises (PFMEs) during their antenatal visits. This study was aimed at assessing the knowledge and actual practice of PFMEs among pregnant women who attend antenatal care in Enugu metropolis. Specifically to assess the level of knowledge of PFMEs among the pregnant women, assess the proportion of the women who practice PFMEs, ascertain whether there exists any difference between knowledge and actual practice of PFMEs, and to identify possible factors that affect compliance to PFMEs. Materials and Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive design was adopted for this study. Pretested structured questionnaire was administered to the sample of 252 antenatal women in selected antenatal clinics selected through simple random sampling. Data were collected and analyzed using SPSS version 25. Results: Results show that although majority (71.0%) of the women were taught PFMEs, only 38.37% practice the exercise. The difference in proportion between those who were taught and those who practice PFMEs were statistically significant (p < 0.05). Major reasons by the respondents for noncompliance with the exercise routine include forgetting (40.4%), being too tired (35.9%), and being too busy (18.0%). Conclusion: Despite the relatively high level of knowledge of PFMEs, level of practice was low. Hence, it was recommended that antenatal care providers should explore ways of improving compliance with taught exercise regime such as helping the women identify/develop appropriate cues to exercise.