When talking about the bond a mother creates with her child, we talk about the so-called “Maternal Instinct”. Normally we define it as a form of innate protection, a unique and pure love, a basic instinct that comes from the heart, from the brain and from the woman’s whole being to take care, raise, protect and love the child that was brought to life.
There are infinite theories about what it is and a vast romantic literature about it, but to analyse it objectively, we have to remember that we are both humans and mammals and that during the labor phase the most active part of the woman's body is her "primitive brain”. Arcane brain structures (hypothalamus, pituitary gland, etc) take over the neocortex, our "more rational" brain, making birth a more similar experience to that of other mammals.
According to ethology (the science that studies animal behavior), it has been proved that all animals have some kind of "instinct”. These instinctive behaviors are non-rational and generated by several factors such as genetic inheritance, culture, environment, etc. Therefore, it can be said that the behaviors and actions of a mother are generated partly by rational processes, partly by environmental and cultural factors, and partly by her irrational "animal" nature, governed by chemical processes induced by her body. During delivery, a woman releases a particular combination of hormones including oxytocin that, naturally released by the pituitary gland, enters in both the bloodstream, acting on the uterine and breast muscles, and in the nervous system, acting on the emotional state behavior. It induces calm, reduces stress, increases trust and empathy, playing a key role in the imprinting mechanism. It also stimulates the desire to protect and the pleassure to take care of the newborn.
Analyzing how each of these factors affects a woman's well-being during the stages of pregnancy, childbirth, and post-partum is essential to ensure that the complex process of birth and care of newborns becomes something positive, trying to control and remove negative factors and re-build the interaction of rational and irrational parties.
For this reason antenatal maternal health care, delivery and postpartum quality of life should be the major concerns in the gynaecology and obstetric department worldwide. The importance of dealing with these problems increases furthermore in poorly developed or in developing countries, such as Romania. Good care during pregnancy is essential for the health of the mother and the development of the fetus. Inadequate and insufficient care during this period breaks a critical link in the continuum of care and affects both women and babies.
Amelioration of postpartum quality of life, in most cases, is an easy problem to solve but prevention is the real matter. In Romania, increasing awareness of the possible outcomes of poor postnatal health care, and subsequently increasing education and knowledge, would automatically reduce the amount of maternal deaths and postpartum complications.
Studies about postpartum quality of life in Romania are extremely limited. Researches are mainly based on antenatal health care and most programs focus on how to improve maternal knowledge on pregnancy and learning about what surrounds it physiologically and pathologically. The basis of an adequate postpartum healthy lifestyle stands upon appropriate knowledge but its relevance, in what way and how much it is affected, still needs understanding and needs to be deepened additionally. Comprehending the complications and possible outcomes of a poorly monitored and followed pregnancy and comparing them to a pregnancy that has been observed and surveyed for the entire 9 months of gestation would then further help to see where the main problem relies. Focusing and trying to remove that specific problem would be a significant step forward.
