Perinatal quality of life: is it important for childbearing women?

Acknowledgement of and support for women's psychological and social health and wellbeing across the childbearing spectrum is a core aspect of contemporary maternity care provision. These broader definitions of health and wellbeing have stimulated a growing interest in and acknowledgement of the concept of quality of life as important in pregnant and postnatal women. Accruing evidence would suggest that a number of aspects of the childbearing experience, linked to physiological change, physical demand, clinical events, outcomes and complications and emotional transition across the perinatal period, are relevant to a woman's perceived quality of life. In addition, those perceptions of quality of life may have further implications for both physical and psychological wellbeing. It could be argued that accurate assessment of quality of life, however, requires reliable tools that have been either designed for or validated in childbearing populations. This paper briefly presents some of the issues related to quality of life in pregnancy and the postnatal periods and discusses some of the available measures to assess quality of life in childbearing women.