Midwife Care Can Help Cut Postpartum Depression

Q: In the UK, women typically get 6 to 7 home visits by a midwife in the 10 to 14 days after birth. Professor Christine MacArthur, from the University of Birmingham, and colleagues, report that redesigning such care could have a significant impact on postpartum depression, which strikes one in ten mothers in countries like the UK and US

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A:In the UK, women typically get 6 to 7 home visits by a midwife in the 10 to 14 days after birth. Professor Christine MacArthur, from the University of Birmingham, and colleagues, report that redesigning such care could have a significant impact on postpartum depression, which strikes one in ten mothers in countries like the UK and US

A: Their study, which included just over 2,000 women treated by midwives from 36 general practitioner surgeries, compared a new model of postpartum care against standard treatment. The results are published in the February 2nd issue of The Lancet. About half the women received the redesigned care. Midwives used new guidelines designed to assess mothers' health, compiling care plans for individual patients and using a recognised screening tool to check for depression at ten days and one month. Each woman received home visits up to 28 days after birth and had a follow up visit 10 or 12 weeks after the birth. The remaining women received conventional postnatal care, which involved regular visits by the midwife for the first two weeks, followed

by health visitor checks and a doctor's appointment after six or eight weeks. Wow, that's a lot of home visits - how neat! I thought I was fortunate because I get one at 2-3 days postpartum (not from the midwives, but from the RNs from our birth center). I can also get one from an LC, too, I think, but wow, in the UK that's about a visit every 2 days. I would think that would help a lot with things like understanding normal newborn care and procedures, breastfeeding, how much help mom needs from dad and other people, etc. - plus if you know you've got someone coming to check on you, I think you'd be less likely to try to "do it all" and more likely to rest.