Abstract

Introduction: After delivery, family’s attention changes from mother to child, while mothers tend to get very busy and do not pay attention to their health. The aim of this study was to determine prevalence and persistence of health problems after child birth and maternal correlations with parity

Materials and Methods: In this descriptive-longitudinal, study 308 mothers who visited Mahabad community health centers for parental care (36-38 weeks) were selected. Instrument in this study was Postpartum Morbidity Scale, which developed by researcher. Content validity, internal consistency (0.94) and test-retest reliability (0.98) was measured.

Data gathered by interview at 7 days, 8 weeks and 12 months after delivery and analyzed by SPSS/18. To determine difference and causing problems among multiparous women primiparous, Chi²was used and 95% confidence interval was used to determine the relative risk.

Findings: The result showed that common reported problems at first and second stage were backache 64% and 60% and fatigue 63% and 60% respectively. However, after 12 months of the delivery fatigue was 43%. During 7 days of delivery, we found significant relationship between backache (P=0.005), headache (P=0.013), tiredness (P=0.008), side effect of anesthesia (P=0.041) and sleep problems (P=0.001) with multiparous mothers. These values after 8 weeks of delivery were backache(P=0.047), stitches infection (P=0.023), urinary tract infection (P=0.000), sex problems (P=0.003), postpartum blue (P=0.002), sleep problems (P=0.001) reported more between multiparous. 12 months after delivery, there were a significant relation between postpartum blue (P=0.024), sex problem (P=0.001), sleep problems (P=0.036) and multiparous of mothers.

Conclusion: Due to high prevalence of postpartum morbidities and lack of attention to solving these problems, changing the postpartum regular care and offering educational courses to mothers are necessary and highly recommended.