Bump Start: Developing and piloting a healthy living group intervention for obese pregnant women

Pregnancy is a time when women may be particularly motivated to
make healthy lifestyle changes, which is encouraging when maternal
obesity remains such an important modifiable risk factor. However,
offering the right ‘recipe’ of support can be challenging for midwives.
They report lacking time and confidence for ongoing discussions
about diet and physical activity in consultations, and a lack of local
evidence-based supportive services to which they can refer interested
women. This article reports the efforts of a team of midwives,
health psychologists, dieticians and physiotherapists to use theory
and evidence to develop and pilot a community-based programme
to address this issue. Bump Start aims to encourage healthy lifestyle
changes in overweight antenatal women in a health board in Scotland.
It presents initial findings from the first pilot, highlighting particular
factors that went well and challenges that presented themselves along
the way, in the hope of sharing learning with other teams.