Early Motherhood: Maternal Challenges and Coping Strategies Among First-Time Ghanaian Mothers

Background: Motherhood is a joyous experience in the life of every woman. A woman’s identity is often defined by her ability to bear children in communities where motherhood is greatly valued. However, transition to motherhood comes with the demand of increasing responsibilities. This study therefore explored the challenges and coping mechanisms employed by first-time Ghanaian mothers to meet the demand of motherhood. Methods and findings: This paper employed a qualitative study design through in-depth face-to-face interviews with 15 first-time mothers at 12 months postpartum. First-time mothers identified motherhood challenges such as difficulty combining mothering and work-family dilemma and having sleepless nights. Two themes emerged as coping strategies used by first-time mothers; these include obtaining support from parents, family relatives, external sources and self-designed coping strategies. Conclusion: The paper concludes that health care providers and policy makers need to fashion out culturally capable maternal coping strategies to supplement those been practised by first-time mothers. Keywords: Early Motherhood, copying strategies, first-time mother

Community-based management of acute malnutrition: Implementation quality, and staff and user satisfaction with services

Background: Malnutrition is a problem that affects many children and therefore is the focus of multiple interventions worldwide. One intervention is the community-based management of acute malnutrition (CMAM). Objective: This study assessed CMAM implementation quality in the Builsa North District of Ghana, and the satisfaction among both users and CMAM staff. Design: The study used a convergent mixed-method design involving in-depth interviews with CMAM staff and users, document reviews, and observations of the CMAM implementation. The data were collected across eight health care facilities in eight sub-districts. The data were qualitatively and thematically analysed in Nvivo software. Results: Several factors were found to adversely affect the quality of CMAM implementation. Significant factors included inadequate training of CMAM workers; religious belief systems; and a lack of implementation materials, such as ready-to-use therapeutic food (RUTF), CMAM registration forms/cards, and computers. These factors adversely affected programme quality, thus resulting in dissatisfaction among CMAM users and staff. Conclusion: This study established that the CMAM programme in the Builsa North District of Ghana is hindered by a lack of primary resources and logistics necessary for successful programme implementation