Unintended Pregnancy and Associated Factors among Pregnant Women Attending Antenatal Care at Bako Tibe District Public Health Facility, Oromia Region, Ethiopia.

Background: A pregnancy is described unintended if it is either unwanted or mistimed. The former occurs when no child or no more children are desired, and the latter is when the conception occurs earlier than the desired time, but wanted later. Unwanted pregnancy causes a serious health, economic, and social problem to the woman and her family. In the study area, there is limited data on unintended pregnancy. Therefore, this study fills this gap by studying the magnitude of unintended pregnancy and its associated factors among pregnant women attending antenatal care in the study area.

Methods: A facility-based cross-sectional study was done from 1 March to 1 April 2019, among 612 randomly selected pregnant women attending antenatal care at Bako Tibe district public health facility. The data were collected via interview using a structured and pretested questionnaire. They were entered into EpiData Version 3.1 and SPSS Version 23 for cleaning and analyses. The variables, which were significant at P ≤ 0.2 in the bivariate logistic regression, were included in the multivariable analysis. The direction and strength of statistical association were measured by an odds ratio with 95% CI. A variable with a P value < 0.05 was considered a significantly associated factor with the outcome one.

Results: In this study, the prevalence of unintended pregnancy was 33.3%, at 95% CI (29.8, 37.3). The factors that had significant association with unintended pregnancy were family size ≥ 6 (AOR = 8.0, 95% CI: 1.38-46.66), women who did not communicate about family planning with their husbands (AOR = 2.8, 95% CI: 1.50-5.20), and parity ≥ 5 (AOR = 3.0, 95% CI: 1.34-6.8).

Conclusion: About one-third of the pregnant women reported that their pregnancy was unintended. Parity, family size, and lack of spousal communication showed a significant association with the problem. To decrease the current level of unintended pregnancy in the area, the Bako Tibe District Health Bureau and the health workers should work harder to scale up spousal communication on family planning.