Healthy gestational weight gain (GWG) is associated with better pregnancy outcomes and with improved health in the later lives of women and babies. In this thesis the author describes the process of developing an intervention to help pregnant women reach a healthy GWG. The need for this intervention was derived from discussions with midwives, working in primary care in the Netherlands.

In this introduction, the author describes the background of the larger project “Promoting Health Pregnancy”, of which this study is a part (1.2), the problem of unhealthy
GWG (1.3-1.6) and offers a brief introduction to the theoretical framework of the study and to the subsequent chapters (1.7-1.9).