Midwifery
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childbirth is a crucial experience in women's life as it has a substantial psychological, emotional and physical impact. A childbirth positive experience is important to the woman, infant's health and well-being, and mother-infant relationship. Furthermore, it is useful for the care providers to guarantee the best preparation, health service and support to childbearing women. The Childbirth Perception Questionnaire (CPQ) is a 27-item instrument designed to assess women's perception of their childbirth experience. ⋯ the current research evidenced that the Italian first adaptation of the CPQ, the Childbirth Experience Perception Scale, may be a valid and reliable measure of childbirth experience perception for use in different women's health clinical outcome and studies.
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to describe a 'hearts and minds' approach to community Baby Friendly Initiative implementation developed from the views of multidisciplinary professionals. ⋯ a 'hearts and minds' approach transcends the prescriptive aspects of a macro-level intervention with its emphasis upon audits, training, statistics and 'hard' evidence through valuing other professionals and engaging staff at all levels. It offers insights into how organisational change may move beyond traditional top-down mechanisms for driving change to incorporate ways that value others and promote cooperation and reflection.
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This paper explores the relationship between perceptions of prenatal control, expectations for childbirth, and experienced control in labour and birth and how they individually and collectively affect birth satisfaction. ⋯ Experienced control during labour and birth is an important predictor of birth satisfaction. Health care providers should collaborate with the women they care for to use techniques that maximize the experience of control especially during labour and birth.
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Women's experiences of childbirth have far reaching implications for their health and that of their babies. This paper describes an exploration of women's experiences of childbirth in the Republic of Ireland. ⋯ Excluding women's views from service evaluation renders an incomplete and somewhat distorted depiction of childbirth in Ireland. Although women appear to be satisfied with a live healthy baby, the process of 'getting there' has an emotional and psychological dimension that is important to the experience. Measuring the quality of maternity services must encompass recognition of psychological and emotional well-being alongside physical safety.
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The postpartum period presents several challenges related to learning infant care tasks, getting to know the infant and fulfilling self-expectations as parents. There is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of information-technology-based interventions that support parenting during this period. ⋯ Both intervention and control mothers' and fathers' parenting satisfaction and PSE became more positive during the postpartum period. However, no intervention effects were found. In the future, it would be interesting to study longer-term effects and more specific groups of parents. The results indicate that online support has the potential to reach parents from diverse backgrounds. More research is needed on gender differences and user preferences. More interactive methods are needed to support parents' affective skills related to PSE.