Mother’s satisfaction with childbirth has a marked influence on the health and well-being of mothers and infants alike.
Dissatisfaction with childbirth is associated with greater postpartum depressive symptoms, and low-income women are at greater risk for displaying postpartum depressive symptoms.
Two key predictors of birth satisfaction are mother’s sense of personal control and mother’s pain acceptance.
Experiential avoidance, or attempting to avoid difficult thoughts, feelings and physical sensations, may compromise a birthing woman’s personal control and pain acceptance abilities and decrease satisfaction with birth.
Our objective is to increase women’s satisfaction with birth and decrease postpartum depressive symptoms by targeting experiential avoidance. Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) is an evidence-based approach that has shown effectiveness in decreasing experiential avoidance and increasing personal control and pain acceptance in many populations. We will employ a randomized controlled design (N=50) to test the effectiveness of the ACT-based Birth Your Way prenatal intervention among a sample of low-income pregnant women in their third trimester.
In 6 prenatal class sessions, women engage in mindfulness practice, values-directed behavior change exercises and group-cohesion activities, all of which target experiential avoidance with the aim of increasing birth satisfaction and reducing postpartum depressive symptoms. Validated measures are used to assess childbirth satisfaction, experiential avoidance and postpartum depressive symptoms.
Participants are recruited through agencies that serve low-income populations, and an implementation science approach allows the results from this trial to inform the continued development of the program, including its integration into agencies that serve low-income women.