| Budget Amount *help |
¥3,300,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,300,000)
Fiscal Year 2004: ¥800,000 (Direct Cost: ¥800,000)
Fiscal Year 2003: ¥1,500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,500,000)
Fiscal Year 2002: ¥1,000,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,000,000)
|
|---|
| Research Abstract |
In FY2004 specialist midwives made home visits to former low birth weight NICU babies, in continuation of the previous year's objective of establishing a system for providing essential support for successful breast feeding of infants. The home visits were made at the request of 25 mothers who had been in the "N" Medical Center. In addition to providing the necessary assistance, semi-structured interviews were conducted to assess the physical conditions of the mothers and their babies, how well nursing was being conducted, whether or not the mothers were receiving support from others and the mothers' worries or annxieties.
Of the 25 women,20 were primiparas and 5 were multiparas. There were three cases of twins and one of triplets. The aveage age of the mothers was 33.3,average gestational age was 29.7 weeks, and the babies' weights upon discharge from the center had an average weight of 2,452g. On average, the visits were made on the 24th day after discharge from the center. Most of the
… More
women were continuing to breast feed, either directly (in 10 cases) or by a combination of direct nursing and feeding expressed breast milk. In 12 cases, the husband alone was sharing in child care and no one shared the mother's burden in one case. Overall, the mothers' situations were that they received little support for child care.
The visits brought to light background and family issues pertaining to child care. The subjects suffered from accumulated caregiver fatigue due to problems caused by their babies' insufficiently developed physical functions, their own uncertainties about what to expect or inavailability of good advice. The visits provided the subjects with critical mental reassurance as the result of having specific questions that had arisen in their home environments addressed, their gaining full understanding of the benefits of breast feeding and receiving direct care of their breasts, etc. These positive effects notwithstanding, however, with only their husbands to provide assistance, the multiple mothers were struggling valiently, the triplets mother, for example, affixing tape labels to her babies to keep track of numbers of feedings and amounts of milk consumed.
Over time, fatigue build-up poses a danger to the health of these mothers. There is a need to establish community-based systems that provide full support for breast feeding, including visits by primary nurses with NICU experience that begin as soon as the infant leaves the medical facility. A supply of highly trained specialists must be assured in order to meet this need for a comprehensive system of ongoing caregiving to low birth weight babies. Less
|
