Introduction
Maternal, infant, and child healthcare plays an important role in health care practice because it addresses health issues that affect women and children. Many pregnant women, mothers, and infants face a myriad of health challenges that endanger their wellbeing. This form of healthcare enables practitioners to design appropriate healthcare interventions to deal with such challenges. This ensures the targeted population enjoys high-quality care that safeguards their wellbeing. In addition, specific factors that hinder mothers and their children from accessing quality care are taken care of more effectively. This essay will review a peer-reviewed article that talks about the relationship between stressful situations women get exposed to before conception and how they cause them to give birth to low-weight infants.
Summary of the Article
The article examines various stressful life events that a woman is exposed to before conception. The study examined 9350 mothers and low birth weight babies to find out how mothers’ exposure to stressful events before pregnancy caused infants to be born with low weight. The main participants in the study were biological mothers aged 15 and above, who served as primary respondents (Witt et al., 2014, p. 81). The study relied on a sample of infants from minority populations who were born with low birth weight. Personal interviews and questionnaires were the main data collection approaches used. The main criteria used in the study include; low or very low birth weight, stressful episodes before conception, prenatal health issues, and a mother’s social background. Statistical analysis processes were used to measure mothers’ exposure to stress before conception, problems faced during pregnancy, and the relationship between low birth weight and general stress in a mother.
The results obtained by the study showed that women who were exposed to stressful life events before conception had a 38% probability of giving birth to low-weight infants compared to other women who had not. The results also showed that unmarried women from low-income demographic segments were more likely to experience stress before conception compared to married women. In addition, the study showed that complications experienced by mothers during pregnancy exposed them to a higher risk of getting low-weight infants after birth (Witt et al., 2014, p. 83). Therefore, this article makes caregivers aware of various risk factors that women face before, during, and after pregnancy and how they impact maternal and infant health. The results obtained by the study encourage nurses and other healthcare professionals to anticipate different challenges that impact the provision of maternal, child, and infant healthcare in different settings.
Article Critique
The main strength of the article is that it has discussed how stress factors experienced by women before conception affect the wellbeing of their infants after birth. It equips healthcare practitioners with more knowledge regarding maternal and infant health using evidence-based healthcare interventions. Therefore, the article accurately shows how external social influences may increase stress in a woman and how they cause her to give birth to a low-weight infant. The main weakness of the article is that it has focused a lot on external factors that expose women to high levels of stress before conception while ignoring other important causes. Other factors such as; a woman’s medical history before pregnancy, types of diets she consumes, and substance and alcohol consumption, may cause a woman to give birth to a low-weight infant (Witt et al., 2014, p. 84). Moreover, the study’s sample did not include mothers of high birth weight infants. This would have enabled the researchers to come up with more conclusive evidence to validate their assumptions.
After a careful analysis, I have found out that I would recommend the article to a colleague. As a result, he would be in a position to interpret the findings to understand how they can be applied in his professional practice. In addition, the researchers were able to explain psychological factors that predispose mothers and their infants to different types of maternal risks (Witt et al., 2014, p. 84). Since the main participants were drawn from minority segments of the population, the study was able to show how social factors such as low incomes and single motherhood expose mothers to stress before conception. The researchers focused on a longer period to find out how various stressful situations a woman is exposed to in her life, impact her reproductive health. Therefore, the information put forward by the article requires more health experts to find out how these findings can be made part of maternal health policies.
Conclusion
The article raises valid issues that affect the quality of maternal and infant healthcare in different healthcare settings. It shows the manner in which various stressing factors are detrimental to a woman’s reproductive health and how they cause infants to be born with low birth weight. Therefore, the article makes health experts redirect their attention to social factors women face before conceiving to find out how they are likely to impact the health and wellbeing of their infants, after pregnancy.
Reference
Witt, W.P., Cheng, E.R., Wisk, L.E., Litzelman, K., Chatterjee, D., Mandell, K., & Wakeel,F. (2014). Maternal stressful life events prior to conception and the impact on infant birth weight in the United States. American Journal of Public Health, 104(1), 81-89.