Abstract

The study aimed to assess the nutritional knowledge, practices and packed cell volume of expectant mothers attending antenatal clinic in FMC Abuja. A structured interviewer-administered questionnaire was used. The questionnaire was adequately checked and validated. It was also pretested for sensitivity of questions, ambiguity and suitability of language. A systematic random sampling technique was used to select two hundred and fifty-six (256) pregnant women attending antenatal clinic at FMC Abuja. None of the women was interviewed more than once. Ethical approval was gotten from the Health Research Ethics Committee (HREC) of FMC Abuja. The IBM SPSS statistics version 23 was used for the statistical analysis. Results were presented in tables using frequencies and simple percentages. Chi square statistics was used to determine associations between variables and significance was taken at P< 0.05%. The result shows that none of the expectant mothers had poor nutritional knowledge, 4.7% had good nutritional knowledge, while the majority 95.3% had excellent nutritional knowledge towards pregnancy and childbirth. For nutritional-related practices observed by the expectant mothers, more than half (59.4%) had excellent, 35.2% had good while about 5.5% had poor nutritional-related practices. Majority (74.6%) of the expectant mothers had normal packed cell volume, 24.5% had a moderate packed cell volume range, while the least (1.2%) had mild range. A targeted nutrition education program should be introduced to improve the practices of already acquired knowledge of nutrition amongst the expectant mothers to ensure optimal maternal and fetal wellbeing.