Kudos to Bonnie Hepler, PhD student, and her sponsor Debra Brandon, associate professor, and co-sponsor Diane Holditch-Davis, Marcus E. Hobbs Professor Emerita, for the submission of her NIH NRSA Fellowship application entitled: "Trajectories of Maternal Needs and their Impact on Mother Infant Interactions." This proposal requests funds for a 2.5-year period with a start date of April 1, 2022. 

Mothers experience many needs in the initial six weeks postpartum. Recently, mothers in the U.S. are experiencing a rising incidence of postpartum hemorrhage, sepsis and preeclampsia, and reporting more mental health problems, such as postpartum anxiety or depression, than in 1990s. Despite increasing postpartum morbidity and mortality rates, mothers in the United States do not follow-up with a provider until six weeks postpartum. The timing of this postpartum visit has been debated by the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology (ACOG) with increasing evidence that the six weeks postpartum visit may be insufficient. Current research falls short of describing the trajectory of needs between the time a mother is discharged from the hospital to the routine follow-up visit at six weeks postpartum. 

The purpose of this longitudinal mixed method study is to describe the needs of 60 mothers with healthy, infants >37 weeks gestation at birth during the first 6 weeks postpartum and to explore how maternal needs affect mother-infant interactions. Asynchronous digital diary data collection will occur through text messages and will allow mothers to provide data at a time convenient to them and their infants. Data can be collected with limited participant burden from 1 to 6 weeks postpartum. Additionally, one face-to-face interview at 6 weeks and 2 behavioral observations at baseline and 6-weeks will allow the researcher to explore gaps using text message data collection and explore the impact of maternal needs on mother-infant interactions. Using these techniques, this study aims to 1) Describe the trajectory of maternal needs and resources across the first 6 weeks postpartum by race/ethnicity, parity and education, and 2) Explore the characteristics of early mother-infant interactions based on mothers with more or fewer needs.