Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing
ResearchPredictors of Crying Problems in the Early Postpartum Period
Section snippets
Background
Current pediatric theories regard infant crying as a normal part of a child's neuro-behavioral development with large interindividual variation. Infant crying follows a typical curve that peaks during the 6th week postpartum at nearly 3 hours crying per day and declines to below 1 hour/day by 12 weeks of age (Barr 2002, Brazelton 1962, Von Hofacker and Papousek 1998). Existing literature concentrates on the upper end of the crying continuum—infantile colic, also called excessive crying—which
Methods
Based on previous literature we hypothesized that the risk of early crying problems would be associated with sociodemographic factors (maternal age; maternal education, and work load; single parenthood), reproductive-maternal factors (parity, mode of delivery, prenatal, intrapartum, or postpartum disorders, including psychological decompensation and/or depression of the mother), and neonatal health factors (gestational age, birth weight, neonatal disorders). We also investigated women's plans
Results
The source population for the study was women that received postnatal home care by independent midwives in Switzerland in 2007. Characteristics of the source population were compared with the overall childbearing population in Switzerland for the same year (2007) (Table 1). The women in the source population were slightly older, and there was a higher percentage of non-Swiss mothers compared to the overall childbearing population in Switzerland in 2007. Family structure and the number of
Discussion
Our analysis identified significant associations between midwife-reported crying problems in the early postpartum period and sociodemographic, reproductive-maternal, and neonatal factors. A novel finding is that the relationship between maternal conditions and infant crying was already evident in the immediate postpartum period. Maternal depression and psychic decompensation during the first 10 days were the major risk factors associated with reported crying problems, followed by non-Swiss
Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Swiss Federation of Midwives who provided the data set for this study and Stephan Meyer and Sandra Engberg for final editing.
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