Maternal care practices among young mothers in selected barangays in Davao City: Associated factors and birth outcomes

• Main Author: Gultia, Algin V.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2017
• Subjects: Maternal health services > Philippines > Davao City
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_masteral/5717
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study primarily describes the maternal care practices among young mothers in selected barangays in Davao City. This study also determines how their maternal care practices are influenced with the level of their husband support and the level of their knowledge of pregnancy risks. Furthermore, it ascertains the association between their maternal care practices and their birth outcomes. It used a descriptive quantitative research design to describe the relationships among variables. This study involved 100 young mothers from the three barangays with highest maternal mortality rate in Davao City through a purposive sampling design. Findings indicate that young mothers had low quality level of all the three maternal care practices: prenatal care, childbirth care, and postpartum care. Data revealed that these young mothers received low level of support from their husband and obtained low level of knowledge of pregnancy risks. Young mothers and their infants had low level of birth outcome abnormalities. Results from Spearmans correlation showed that the lower the husband support and the knowledge of pregnancy risks among young mothers, the lower also their quality maternal health care in terms of prenatal and postpartum care. Moreover, findings revealed that the higher the childbirth quality maternal health care, the higher also the level of positive birth outcomes for newborns. To add, as the postpartum quality maternal health care increases, the level of positive maternal birth outcomes also increases. Overall, this study emphasized that young women tended to receive and avail higher quality level of maternal care practices when their husbands are more involved in terms of physical presence, emotional support, financial support, and decisional aspect during the three phases of pregnancy and when they have higher level of knowledge on pregnancy risks. This study also highlighted the role of maternal care practices for the newborn and maternal survival.