Abstract
Objective
Using person-centered analyses, this study examined the trajectories of women’s early postnatal adaptation and explored whether there were differences in their trajectories based on women’s status as a first-time or more experienced mother.
Methods
Data were collected from women (N = 137; Mage = 28.6 years, SD = 4.49; 48.2% first-time mothers) at 2-, 4-, 6-, and 8-weeks postpartum. At each wave of data collection, mothers reported on their parenting self-efficacy, parenting satisfaction, anxiety, parenting stress, and depressive feelings.
Results
The creation of an amalgamated measure of postnatal adaptation demonstrated acceptable fit. Latent class growth analysis revealed four distinct trajectories of postnatal adaptation; two revealed stability across the early postnatal period and two had relative stability except for a change between weeks four to six. Women’s parity was not associated with differences in their trajectories.
Conclusions for Practice
These findings reiterate the importance of collecting data from women in the early postnatal period and identifying if a woman is struggling in those early weeks, as the women in our sample demonstrated relative stability in their postnatal adaptation across the first eight weeks. Furthermore, the findings suggest that work should be taken to dismantle the commonly held belief that parenting is “easier” after having already navigated the early postnatal period with an infant once before.
Significance
Prior research has predominately examined one or two aspects of postnatal adaptation in each study. However, domains of postnatal adaptation (e.g., well-being, parenting satisfaction, parenting stress, and parenting self-efficacy) are associated. Furthermore, the results of studies comparing first-time and more experienced mothers’ postnatal adaptation have been mixed. This study examined five aspects of women’s postnatal adaptation, confirmed acceptable fit of an amalgamated measure of postnatal adaptation, revealed four distinct trajectories of postnatal adaptation, and demonstrated similarity in first-time and more experienced women’ trajectories of postnatal adaptation.
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Data Availability
Data and materials are available on Open Science Framework (OSF; https://tinyurl.com/MothersPostnatalAdaptation).
Code Availability
Analysis code is also available on OSF (https://tinyurl.com/MothersPostnatalAdaptation).
Notes
Although not the focus of these analyses, women also completed a survey during their third trimester of pregnancy. Only those measures used in these analyses are described here. As noted in the procedure, the full survey materials are available on OSF. For example, in the 2-week postnatal survey women were asked about their infant’s birth weight and delivery mode and in the 8-week postnatal survey women were asked about their division of caregiving labor.
Additionally, they had previously been sent a baby gift upon notifying the first author of their birth.
Saving factor scores included estimating factor loadings for a latent construct of postnatal adaptation at each wave, based on our subconstructs of interest (e.g., depression, anxiety). We essentially took the information of factor loadings from each latent variable creating an observed variable based on those factor loadings, thus giving different weight to each subconstruct based on their importance toward the overarching latent construct of postnatal adaptation. This accounts for the strength of each construct constituting the underlying latent variable while providing a sufficiently parsimonious variable to use in more complicated analyses such as LCGA.
With follow up analyses we also examined conception intention, prior depression, and how much their infants slept through the night. There were also no differences across classes. For the sake of parsimony in the manuscript’s focus, these additional results are available on OSF (https://tinyurl.com/MothersPostnatalAdaptation).
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Acknowledgements
Appreciation is extended to Katherine Karraker for her mentorship while conducting this project and to Nicole Graybeal for assisting with data collection.
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The project was conceptualized and carried out by the first author, the second author conducted the longitudinal analyses, both authors contributed substantially to the writing of the manuscript.
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This project was approved by West Virginia University (H-24503), where the first-author was a doctoral student when the study was conducted.
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Powell, D.N., Leonhardt, N.D. A Longitudinal Examination of Mothers’ Early Postnatal Adaptation: Relative Stability Across the First Eight Weeks. Matern Child Health J 27, 2175–2184 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03776-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-023-03776-4