The experiences of maternal anxiety in the pregnancy and postpartum period

Abstract

Motherhood can be full of expectations and feelings that are experienced in unique ways by people. However, it is understood that the maternal experience is a movement full of changes and discoveries, which can generate excessive anxiety in a woman's life. The present research had the general objective of verifying how mothers with children up to 1 year of age deal with anxiety during breastfeeding and also verifying whether there is anxiety related to breastfeeding in mothers who are going through the first year of their child's life, interpreting the They talk about their reports of anxieties caused by breast-feeding and discuss the other impacts of breastfeeding on women's lives. Semi-structured interviews were carried out with mothers who made themselves available and met the research inclusion criteria, namely: older, over 18 years old and with at least one child up to 1 year old. The analysis of the interview results was carried out using the me-thod called Bardin content analysis. In short, it was identified that the causes of anxie-ties related to breastfeeding were pain when breastfeeding and concerns about breast-feeding. The research used the theoretical perspective of John Bowlby's attachment theory.