The Effects of an "Experience Postpartum Care Program" for Primiparas Newborn Care

Background: Compared with providing a series of postpartum care and learning program, the current postpartum care system is more focus on physical recovery of female fertility and caring education of new born babies. It will more often make the primiparas feel helpless, anxious and uncertain when they come back home with their new born babies. This is an important topic for using “Experience postpartum care program” to help those women become more confidence to play a role as being a mother in the first time and develop a positive attitude toward the interaction between mothers and babies.

Purpose: This study intends to establish a complete postpartum of new mother care learning scheme, which is called “Experience postpartum care program” and estimates its effect on maternal behavior, maternal confidence and maternal attachment and performance.

Method: An experimental study was conducted in a medical center located at southern Taiwan. And the study samples are those over than 20 years old primiparas in a medical center in southern Taiwan. They are randomly divided into two groups: Experimental (intervention) group (n=46) and Control group (n=46). The experimental group receives individual health education and early maternal care learning scheme twice a week for 2-3 weeks, however the control group just receives normal care without any interventions.
This research uses descriptive statistics analysis, paired t-test, independent t-test and ANCOVA approaches to evaluate the results and effect between “Experience postpartum care program” and maternal behavior, maternal confidence and maternal attachment.

Results: According to the study, we can figure out the research results are as below:
1.The Experimental group was analyzed by paired t-test before and after the intervention. Their maternal behavior, maternal confidence and maternal attachment is obviously raised (p＜.001).
2.Both the Experimental group and Control group are with clearly difference in maternal behavior and maternal confidence by paired t-test before and after period (p＜0.05). But there is no difference on maternal attachment.
3.The ANCOVA procedure was used to analyze the differences between the Experimental and Control group. The results are maternal behavior（F=22.11，p <0.001）, maternal confidence（F=4.03，p<0.05）and maternal attachment ( F=.15，p＞0.05).
It means that with the intervention, there are big differences on maternal behavior and maternal confidence between two groups. However, there is no significant difference shown on maternal attachment after the intervention between two groups. It indicates that “maternal attachment” is not born with and can’t be achieved within a short time. However, it can be developed the mutual links through continuous learning and the mother-child interactions.

Conclusions/Practical Applications: This study shows that by using “Experience postpartum care program”, the primiparas can gain positive learning experience than becoming a mother during the postpartum period. It will enhance the capability of maternal behavior and help strengthen maternal confidence level. It is suggested to be applied and implemented in postpartum care.