Högskolan i Skövde

Objective: Massage during childbearing has been shown to benefit women’s health and well-being, such as reducing pain and stress and enhancing satisfaction with the labour experience. Despite these documented benefits, massage is not routinely offered as a complementary method by midwives within standard maternity care in Sweden, leaving women’s lived experiences of massage in this context unexplored. Therefore, this study aimed to explore women’s experiences of massage during childbearing.

Methods: The research was conducted as a qualitative study using an inductive approach. Semi-structured interviews with 12 women in Sweden were carried out, and data were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

Results: Analysis of the data yielded one overall theme—seen, heard and touched—and three categories: being mentally present in the body, a vulnerability needed to be respected and sharing experiences. Massage promoted present-moment awareness, trust and safety and relieved pain and stress. It also strengthened the connection with one’s own body and deepened closeness to both partner and unborn child. However, it was associated with vulnerability and the recall of bodily memories.

Conclusion: Massage during childbearing is a supportive practice that integrates physical and emotional well-being with mental recovery, making women feel seen, heard and touched. For optimal benefits and positive experiences, massage must be provided with respect to boundaries. This is particularly important because it may evoke sensitive memories, which involve a vulnerability that needs to be respected. Massage is a valuable complementary method alongside maternity care.

Background: Parental transition means a change in the parents’ couple relationship as the baby becomes the focus, thereby affecting the parents’ communication and intimacy. Such a transition may either strengthen or strain the relationship. As becoming parents poses new challenges to the parental couple, the objective of this Swedish study was to explore how parents perceive Interplay, a digital support tool for their couple relationship and parenting.

Methods: Swedish expectant and new parents were offered the digital support tool ‘Interplay’ (in Swedish: Samspel), which they played mutually with their partner for minimum two weeks. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 expectant and 10 new parents, and the data were analysed using the phenomenographic method.

Results: The results are presented in three descriptive categories: An opportunity to shed light on the couple’s relationship and shared parenting; Reflections about yourself and your partner; The design, sense of trust, interest and willingness to play.

Conclusion: Interplay was perceived by the parents as supporting them in their couple relationships and shared parenting. The parents described that Interplay functioned as a catalyst for communication and reflection within the parenting couple, which broadened the parents’ perspective. Nevertheless, parents varied in their perceptions on whether Interplay was sufficiently developed to be implemented within healthcare and offered to parents. The current study contributes knowledge on how parents perceive that a digital tool, can be designed to support them in their couple relationship and parenting during the transition to parenthood.

Trial registration: The research project is registered (02/10/2020) within the ISRCTN, with ID: ISRCTN18017741.

Objective: The couple’s relationship is affected by the transition to parenthood, but research findings are mixed,with some studies showing positive effects on the relationship and others indicating negative impacts. This studyaims to explore first-time mothers’ and their partners’ perceived quality of dyadic relationship (QDR36) duringpregnancy and the following eight years after childbirth as well as what factors that are associated with a higherQDR36.

Methods: A prospective longitudinal cohort study on 917 Swedish parents, with repeated questionnaires at:gestational week 25 (T1); first week after childbirth (T2); six months (T3); one year (T4); two years (T5); fouryears (T6), and eight years (T7) after childbirth. Non-parametric tests and Cohen’s effect size calculation wereconducted to analyze change over time in QDR36. Multiple linear regressions were carried out with index forQDR36 as dependent variable, at all time points (T1-T7).

Results: QDR36 varied over time among both first-time mothers and partners, showing an increase between T1and T2, followed by a decrease between each point in time. QDR36 was statistically lower at T7 compared to allother points in time (T1-T6). Variations were observed in the variables that were associated with a higher QDR36at different time points, however higher sense of coherence (SOC-13) and social support (MSPSS) were consis-tently associated.

Conclusion: First-time mothers and partners’ perceived quality of couple relationship declines the first eight yearsafter birth. To support them in their couple relationship, healthcare professionals should acknowledge parents’sense of coherence and social support.

Background and Aim

The transition to motherhood is a life-changing period with dilemmas relating to meaning and relationships. These experiences are described as individual and can be related to existential questions and relationships with family and others, as well as whether healthcare professionals, when meeting with becoming mothers, miss promoting existential aspects. This study aimed to illuminate the meaning of becoming a mother during the transition to motherhood.

Methodological Design

The study used an explorative design with a phenomenological hermeneutic approach. Data were collected through open-ended interviews with 22 mothers, eight of whom were pregnant at the time of the interview.

Results

The meaning of becoming a mother was experienced as being profoundly touched and changed. By a sense of belonging and being present in the moment, mothers open up to the possibility of being profoundly emotionally affected, which is understood as essential to their meaning of becoming a mother.

Conclusion

This study reveals that mothers experience intense emotions that can make them vulnerable and open to change, which seems to promote their development of themselves.

For fathers, the transition to parenthood can be experienced as an emotional phase. Fathers often state feeling overlooked and unsupported during their transition to parenthood. This study addressed this issue by exploring what it means to become a father—a qualitative design with a phenomenological hermeneutical approach. Data were collected through open-ended interviews with 19 fathers living in Sweden. The participants were encouraged to reflect on the meaning of becoming a father. Becoming a father means feeling connectedness to their child, their partner, and their friends, as well as creating strategies entailing flexibility, engagement, management, support, and solitude in their new situation. Fathers use digital media for support to create strategies, but it can evoke anxiety. The meaning of becoming a father concludes that they are deeply affected by the new situation. To support fathers during their transition to parenthood, midwives and child healthcare nurses should facilitate reflective conversations with them about their experiences of becoming a father. This study was guided by the Consolidated Criteria for Reporting Qualitative Research Checklist.

Child-centered care is based on the fact that children are individuals with their own rights. Since January 2020, The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) is law in Sweden. Children's meeting with professionals is important because it becomes the children's impression of healthcare that may reflect the children's future image of and feelings about the whole healthcare system. This prospective cross-sectional study aimed to explore child healthcare competence among nurses within primary healthcare. Data were collected through a web-based questionnaire among 101 primary healthcare district nurses, specialist nurses, and registered nurses. The study was compliant with the STROBE checklist. The results showed that the nurses have a good ability to apply child-centered care during children's visits to primary healthcare. To further implement a child-centered approach in primary healthcare, nurses need to have access to workplace educational opportunities continually, to enhance their child competence throughout their nursing careers.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore healthcare professionals’ experiences of working with extended home visits for parents.

Background: It is essential to identify parents, both expectant and with a newborn child, who need support in their parenting abilities at an early stage because children’s health and well-being are affected by their home environment as well as by their parents’ health and social relationships. Home visits represent a cost-effective way of identifying and supporting families with a newborn. Further research is needed to explore healthcare professionals’ experiences working with extended home visits for parents.

Methods: This was a qualitative interview study focusing on an intervention introduced in the Enhanced Parenting—Extended Home Visits project in Sweden. Data were collected via 13 semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals who provide the intervention in antenatal care (midwives) and child health care (CHC nurses and family supporters), and a qualitative content analysis was performed.

Findings: Data analysis resulted in one theme and four categories. The theme – to provide multidimensional adapted professional support, – and the four categories – strengthened collaboration between professionals enriches their work. Home visits provide time for conversation, which promotes continuity of care and relationships with parents; being humble guests in parents’ homes provides insight; and home visits provide the opportunity to strengthen parenting and participation in the family centre. The goals of the Enhanced Parenting—Extended Home Visits project were to strengthen parents’ confidence in their parenting abilities and to build trusting relationships with healthcare professionals. The conclusion of this study, from the participants’ perspective, is that these goals can be achieved with the intervention.

Implications for Practice: Extended home visits seem to help healthcare professionals provide collaborative, multi-professional support for parents, both expectant and with a newborn child, with unique support needs.

Background: Globally, the digital sources developed and available in antenatal care differ, and infrastructure challenges may impede the further development of such sources. Challenges accompanying digital developments can include the commonly occurring high workload, which affects healthcare professionals' ability to acquire professional knowledge about how to best support parents in using digital sources. Including healthcare professionals in the development process of digital sources may increase the likelihood that such sources will be adopted and employed by these professionals in their future care work. Therefore, the present research explored healthcare professionals' perceptions of the digital support intervention Childbirth Journey, which was constructed as a serious game for expectant parents.

Methods: Data were collected through semi-structured focus-group interviews with 11 midwives at antenatal, labour and postnatal clinics as well as with child healthcare nurses. Prior to the interviews, all participants were provided the intervention, Childbirth Journey, which is a serious game in a mobile application format consisting of two distinct parts: (1) a story-driven game and (2) a Knowledge Portal. The data were analysed using phenomenographic methods.

Results: The perceptions of Childbirth Journey by healthcare professionals, midwives and child healthcare nurses are presented in four descriptive categories: extended professional support, trustworthy contents, diversity or individuality, and both appealing and in need of development.

Conclusions: Current study revealed that Childbirth Journey may be utilised as a digital support for parents, allowing healthcare professionals to offer a digital solution as a complementary support to standard, face-to-face meetings with caregivers. However, the research results also revealed that some elements of Childbirth Journey must be improved, thereby representing a main contribution of this study: insights into how to better develop digital tools under the umbrella of health care. Thus, we conclude that in order to create sustainable and safe digital care solutions that function as trustworthy professional supports instead of technical products that risk harming users, the perspectives of both patients and healthcare professionals should be considered in the exploration and development of these solutions.

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore expecting parents’ perceptions of the Childbirth Journey as an intervention that includes medical information for parental support, constructed as a serious game.

Methods: In this qualitative study, semi-structured interviews were held with expecting parents in Sweden who were able to talk about specific parts of the Childbirth Journey they appreciated or found difficult to understand. A phenomenographic methodology was employed for data analysis.

Results: Participants perceived the Childbirth Journey to be easily accessible and customized with reliable information. The design and features of the intervention were perceived by the expecting parents to enhance the intervention’s usability, appeal, and trustworthiness. When parental couples used the Childbirth Journey together, it gave them an opportunity to discuss and better understand each other’s situation. The participants proposed several changes to the existing version of the game, mostly related to extending practical information and illustrated scenarios but also to the further development of the game’s design and animations. The participants found the Knowledge portal to be the most appealing part of the Childbirth Journey.

Conclusions: The Childbirth Journey intervention was concluded to be a valuable digital complement to in-person profes- sional support, especially given the current COVID-19 pandemic restrictions in place in Sweden, which do not allow antenatal visits by partners. However, in its current form, the Childbirth Journey has some deficiencies and would therefore benefit from further development and exploration.

Background

In today's society, people are experiencing the rapid development of digitalisation. Expecting parents may have difficulties evaluating the information online; they are not always sure which sources of information are trustworthy, and this exacerbates their feelings of anxiety. More research is needed to broaden the knowledge about how their use of digital sources may influence their health.

Question

The focus of this study was to explore expecting parents’ use of digital sources and how this influences their health during pregnancy.

Methods

A systematic review covered the thematic analysis of 39 articles.

Findings

The analysis resulted in the following theme: The digitalised society involves both opportunities and challenges, and expecting parents express a need for a variety of digital sources to improve their health, and sub-themes: Digital sources could promote parents’ health and well-being in a digitalised society; Consuming digital health information facilitates understanding, different feelings and social connections; and A variety of digital sources may facilitate parental identification and adaption to parenthood.

Conclusion

Different digital sources in our digitalised society mean access to information and opportunities to extend social connections for expecting parents. This can promote their ability to understand and adapt to parenthood, as well as to improve their health and well-being and make the parental transition. However, professional support during face-to-face consultations cannot always be exchanged to digital sources. It is important to base digital sources devoted to expecting parents and digitalisation overall on multi-sectorial collaborations and coordination between different organisations and the digital sources they provide.