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Heading toward the new normal: a contemporary postpartum experience
1University of Washington, School of Nursing, Seattle, USA. martell@u.washington.edu
Objective:
To describe contemporary women's postpartum experience. Previous descriptions, especially Rubin's taking-in and taking-hold, may no longer apply in this era of 24- to 48-hour hospital stays.
Design:
Qualitative descriptive, using grounded theory methodology. Participants were interviewed about their postpartum experiences. Constant comparative analysis of the interview transcripts was concurrent with data collection.
Setting:
Interviews were conducted in participants' homes during the 1st week after childbirth and again 1 to 2 weeks later.
Participants:
Thirty-two first-time mothers, who vaginally delivered a full-term infant, were recruited through childbirth education classes.
Results:
The major theme that emerged was Heading toward the new normal, a process through which the participants began to reorient their lives as mothers. The supporting categories were Appreciating the body, Settling in, and Establishing a new family.
Conclusions:
The participants' postpartum psychosocial development was a continuous process without discrete stages and phases. This finding differs from Rubin's puerperal change theory. With this new theoretical description, nurses can develop more effective care for contemporary child-bearing women.