Till Örebro universitet

Background: Pregnant women with type 1 diabetes face many obstacles in their struggle to achieve normal blood glucose levels and thus optimise the chanceto give birth to a healthy child. It is a challenge for midwives to support women’s well-being during pregnancy and especially in relation to chronicillness such as diabetes. However, little is known about well-being and diabetes management in early pregnant women with type 1 diabetes.

Purpose/Objective: To explore well-being and diabetes management in women with Type 1 diabetes in early pregnancy and to investigate associations betweenperceived well-being, diabetes management and maternal characteristics.

Method: Data was collected in early pregnancy from 168 Swedish pregnant women with Type 1 diabetes, including information from their medical recordsand self- reported questionnaires measuring aspects of health/well-being, diabetes management and socio demographics.

Key Findings: Relatively high scores of diabetes self-management (SWE-DES-10: 3.91 (0.51)) and self-perceived health (excellent (6.5%), very good (42.3%),good (38.7%), fair (11.3%) and poor (1.2%)) were reported. Moderate scores for general well-being (WBQ-12: 22.6 (5.7)) and sense ofcoherence (SOC-13: 68.9 (9.7), moderate/low scores for hypoglycemia fear (SWE-PAID-20: 27.1 (15.9)) and low scores of diabetes-distress(SWE-PAID-20 27.1 (15.9)) were given. Higher capability of diabetes self-management showed positive correlations with self-perceived health (r s=-0.41, p<.0001) and well-being (rs =0.34, p<.0001) as well as negative correlations with diabetes distress (r s =-0.51, p<.0001) and hypoglycemiaworries (rs =-0.27, p=0.0009).

Discussion: Midwives are in a unique position to uphold well-being in women with type 1 diabetes in early pregnancy. Based on this result it could be topromote women´s self-awareness, strengthen their own capabilities in terms of goal achievement, and to support them to handle diabetes relateddistress as well as possible fear of hypoglycemia.