A collaborative meeting has been held at the University of Ferrara, Italy on 9 December 2022 as part of the ERASMUS plus project entitled Body Confident Mums.

The national collaborating partners from the University of Malta are Prof Jean Calleja-Agius from the Department of Anatomy, Faculty of Medicine and Surgery and Dr Rita Pace Parascandalo from the Department of Midwifery, Faculty of Health Sciences. In the partnership, there are highly experienced researcher partners (Norway, Sweden) and healthcare providers and other relevant stakeholders (Estonia, Greece, Romania, Serbia, Sweden, Italy, the Netherlands, and Malta).

Pregnancy and the postpartum period are a time of significant body image changes for women. While pregnant bodies are often celebrated, women are quickly placed under a great deal of pressure to lose any ‘baby weight’ gained, and get their ‘pre-pregnancy body’ back. Body dissatisfaction in postpartum women is associated with a variety of negative mental and physical health outcomes. Interventions to improve body image in mothers are therefore well justified as they will directly improve maternal health and wellbeing, and indirectly have a positive impact on their children.

As part of the Body Confidents Mums project, Prof Jean Calleja-Agius and Dr Rita Pace Parascandalo have organised a pilot training session on body image in pregnancy aimed at health professionals involved in maternity care. This was followed by a survey to mothers regarding the issue of body image during pregnancy, and there was an overwhelming response to further support this training. Finally, a multiplier event was held for healthcare professionals, to provide training to enable them to support the mental and physical wellbeing for mothers. These findings were presented at the project meeting in Ferrara last week.

Anyone interested in participating in this project can visit the project website.