Awareness and Practice on Postpartum Family Planning among Postpartum Mothers attending Maternal and Child Health Clinic

Abstract

Background: Women in the postpartum period need effective contraceptives to prevent unintended pregnancies soon after child birth. This helps to promote the mother health as well as to reduce the child mortality and morbidity rate. The objective of study was to find out the awareness and practice regarding postpartum family planning among postpartum mothers.

Methods: A descriptive study design was carried among 241 postpartum mothers having under6monthsage child came for vaccination at Sunaulo Bhabisya Nepal, Chitwan. Postpartum mothers were selected using purposive sampling technique. All the postpartum mothers were interviewed through semi structured questionnaire for data collection. Data collection was done from17th December 2019 to 14th January 2020. Data was analyzed by using descriptive statistics with the help of Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS) version 20.

Results: The findings of the study revealed that the mean age of the mothers was 25.36 years. Regarding the awareness on postpartum family planning,most of the mothers had below average (39%) and average (36.9%) level of awareness. Whereas few (24.1%) had above average level of awareness. More than one third of mothers (37.8%) were used family planning method.

Conclusions: The study concluded that only few postpartum mothers had above average awareness. Practice of family planning method was low. Therefore it is recommended that routine counseling on postpartum family planning (PPFP) among antenatal and postnatal mother in health institute should be done.

Keywords: awareness; postpartum family planning; practice.