Childbirth and Care Difficulties of Female Kidney Transplantation Recipients

For mothers who experience transplants, pregnancy and childcare can have significant consequences on their quality of life. This study aims to investigate the childcare-related suffering faced by women who gave birth following kidney transplantation.

Data were collected from 65 Japanese kidney transplant recipients from 21 hospitals who had given birth after transplant. The questionnaire included questions concerning the childcare-related suffering of the female kidney transplant recipients. The data were analyzed using KH Coder for the qualitative text mining analysis.

The results of the co-occurrence network of words and hierarchical cluster analysis revealed 6 categories that were identified regarding the difficulties in childcare experienced by mothers who gave birth after kidney transplantation: comparing themselves with healthy mothers, parenting priorities, getting tired, not being able to take medicine on time, carefully giving the child a hug, being unable to give breast milk, having regular doctor checkups, and having to leave the child.

Recipients experience suffering related to the lifestyle changes that occur as a matter of course during childcare. Recipients are exhausted because of how busy they are with childcare, and they sometimes forget to take their medicine. It is necessary to confirm the living situations of recipients after birth and provide support for their self-management based on their new lifestyles.