Relationships of mothers' orientation to neonatal behavior and mother-infant interaction

With the growing interest in mother-infant relationship in recent times, several authors have discussed the importance of the neonate's ability to elicit and encourage the attachment behaviors of the caretakers. The findings of this study indicate that the nursing care of mothers of newborn infants needs to have an additional emphasis on the newborns' social behavior. The Nursing Child Assessment Feeding Scales were used to observe feeding interaction between mothers and infants in order to identify the effects of orienting mothers to their infants' behavior at two days of age by professional nurses through use of The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale, in contrast to mothers who did not have this orientation. Each category in the Feeding Scales was observed in order to define differences between both groups of mothers. Validation of this study will bring a new program in planning meaningful approaches to give health education to mothers during the post-partum period. Twenty-four mother-infant pairs were randomly selected from the population sin one general hospital between January 15 and February 15, 1980. Fourteen mother-infant pairs were in the experimental group and ten mother-infant pairs were in the control group. The experimental group received an orientation to their newborns through use of The Brazelton Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale on the second or third day of the post-partum period; but the control group did not. After one month, the investigator went to their houses in order to observe mother-infant pairs' interaction during feeding time as measured by the Nursing Child Assessment Feeding Scales. The mothers studied were primigravidas ranging from 19 to 33 years of age with a mean of 23.35 years in the experimental group and a mean of 23.0 years in the control group. The mothers had no complications during pregnancy or the labor process with normal vaginal delivery. The infants were 38 to 42 weeks by clinical gestational age with a mean of 39.70 weeks. They were without illness as indicated by the hospital records. Demographic data concerning the mothers were collected from the hospital records after the investigator completely finished the home observations. The observed data were statistically analyzed with the t-ratios for unequal number of sample values used to identify significant differences between mean values of scores. The groups were generally comparable with a few exceptions. The control group had only one mother who had not married, while all mothers in the experimental group were married. The experimental mother-infant pairs tended to display a higher score on The Feedings Scales than did the mother-infant pairs in the control group (t = 2.428, p < .05). The mothers in the experimental group tended to display more social-emotional growth fostering than the mothers in the control group as indicated by the t-ratio of 3.22 and statistically significant at .01 levels. In conclusion, this study indicated that the most significant differences between the mothers in both groups were related to social-emotional growth fostering to their newborn infants. This will be helpful when considering planning new programs for mothers during the post-partum period.