Socio-demographic and economic characteristics of the study participants
From this study, a total of 303 participants were involved with 99% response rate. The mean age of the attendants was 28.3±2.7. Almost all (98%) of the respondents were married, nearly two third (68.6%) of the respondents were Hadiya. Only 24.1% of the respondents were can’t read and write, 239 (78.9%) of the women were house wife as well as around one fifth (23.1%) of the respondents had less than 500 Ethiopia birr for monthly family members expenditure (Table 1).
Pregnancy and Maternal clinical related Characteristics
The mean age of first delivery of the participants was 20.7±1.7 month. More than two third of respondents (78.9%) had previous pregnancy from those 58.7% of them delivered at health facility while the rest delivered at home. This study revealed closely one third of the participants 98 (32.3%) had two ANC visits plus with 45.2% of respondents were in the third trimester. The participants were also evaluated for whether they had history of some morbidity such as malaria, HIV/AIDS, Hypertension, diabetes mellitus, tuberculosis and intestinal helminthes during this study. Almost one fifth (19.5%) of respondents were reported history of malaria, intestinal helminthes and hypertension in the last one year; however, none of the respondent was diagnosed to have any of the rest major morbidity during the current pregnancy (Table 2).
Description of Nutritional Related Characteristics
This study revealed only thirty (9.9%) of the women have got information regarding nutrition such as iron source food, additional meal and healthy diets during pregnancy from different sources. The mean of twenty four hours meal intake frequency of the respondents was 2.7±0.52. The mean of food variety consumed within a week of the respondents was 19.4±3.6. From this study less than half of the participants have eaten milk and milk products; whole milk(46.2%), cheese(55.8%), yoghurt(22%), butter(19.3%); Cereals; teff(99.2%), wheat(94.6%), barley(16.8%), millet (3.2%), oats (13.5%), rice(28.3%); Dark green leafy vegetables; kale(16.9%), Swiss chard (11.6%), endive(14.3%), lettuce(40.5%); Other vitamin A rich fruit, tubers and vegetables; mango(32%), papaya(22.5%), carrots(24.4%), potato (82.3%); Other fruits; orange(38.6%), lemon(11.2%); Other vegetables; tomatoes(81%), chilies(40.1%); Meat, poultry and fish; beef(20.2%), mutton(10%), goat(2.6%), poultry (1.6%) and fish (0.8%); Pulse or Legumes; lentils (92%), peas (87%), chicken peas(22%), horse bean(33%), kidney bean (4.2%) and lastly 78% 0f the participants took products of inset (Table 3 and 4).
Women dietary diversity score
Out of ten food group consumption of the seven days, the mean of dietary diversity was 7±1.3 with scores ranging from 3 to 9 food groups. Based on the score of tertiles almost half of the respondents (48.2%) were in the medium (5–7 food groups), 9.2% in low (<5 food groups) and 42.6% had high dietary diversity (≥8 food groups). There is no standard cut-offs to specify adequate or inadequate dietary diversity within a week for the women we used dietary diversity score by converting tertiles, according to this study 129 (42.6%) of study participants have adequate dietary diversity score or had greater than or equal to eight food groups but 174 (57.4%) consumed inadequate dietary diversity that is less than eight food groups within a week (Table 3 and Figure 1).
Factors Associated with Dietary diversity among Pregnant Women
In this study, both bivariate and multivariable logistic regression analysis were computed, In bivariate analysis, education of women, occupation of the women, gap between the previous and current pregnancy, history of health education about nutrition during pregnancy, monthly income of the family, number of family and frequency of meal were identified as the candidate for multivariable logistic regression analysis; in multivariable analysis revealed that; women who attended higher institution had 2.1 higher odds of attaining adequate dietary diversity as compared to those who can’t read and write (AOR=2.1; CI: 4.8, 15.2), women whose family monthly income earned greater than 2000 Ethiopia birr 1.9 times (AOR=1.9; 95% CI: 1.06, 7.1) more likely to have adequate dietary diversity as compared to those less than 500 Ethiopia birr, in addition women who got health education about nutrition concerning eating additional meals, iron source and diversified foods during pregnancy (AOR=2.3; 95% CI: 1.2, 4.4) were 2.3 times more likely to have adequate dietary diversity as compared to those who didn’t get the information; furthermore, women’s frequency of meal 3 times per day 8.3 times (AOR=8.3; 95% CI: 4.5, 15.6) and ≥4 times (AOR=12.9; 95% CI: 3.1, 52) were 12.9 times had greater odds of achieving adequate dietary diversity than who had 2 times meal frequency per day (Table 5)