The Impact of a Transition to Motherhood Program on Postpartum Outcomes of Primiparous Women: A Randomized Controlled Trial.

Abstract

Objectives: Pregnant women who have no experience in the transition to motherhood may face various problems such as low self-evaluation, physically problems, low maternal attachment both in the prenatal and postpartum period.

Methods: This research was conducted as a randomized, controlled, single-blind pretest-post-test experimental study, was performed with primiparous women registered 73 pregnant meeting the inclusion criteria between December 2019 and December 2021. Pretest was applied to the experimental and control groups, Transition to Motherhood program based on Meleis' Transition Theory was applied to the experimental group; two post-tests were applied to the experimental and control groups group at the postpartum sixth week and fourth month.

Results: The mean age of the experimental group was 26.91 ± 3.10, 45.7% of them had university or higher education level, 77.1% of them had a planned pregnancy, 88.6% of them had fear of birth. There was no statistically significant difference in terms of characteristic features between the experimental and control groups (p < 0.05). There was no statistically significant difference between the total mean scores of Prenatal Self-Evaluation Questionnaire and Prenatal Attachment Inventory applied as pretest of the pregnant women in the experimental and control groups (p > 0.05). A statistically significant difference was found between the groups; in terms of the Postpartum Self-Assessment Scale, Postpartum Physical Symptoms Severity, and the Maternal Attachment Inventory scores which were applied as the first post-test (postpartum sixth week), and the scores of the Maternal Attachment Inventory applied as the second posttest (postpartum fourth month) (p < 0.05).

Conclusion: The Transition to Motherhood program had positive effects on postpartum self-assessment, postpartum physical symptom severity and maternal attachment of the primiparas.

Clinical trial registration: This report was prepared in line with the Consort and TIDieR guideline. The research was also registered with Clinical Trials under no. NCT05272527.