The Maternal Looking Guide: a perinatal clinical tool to support the emerging mother-infant relationship’

ABSTRACT

Background

This study explores maternal looking – the unidirectional looking by a mother at her newborn – as a precursor to mother-infant gaze.

Methods

Phase 1 used video as a means of detailed and disciplined observation to examine how mothers look at their newborns (n = 13). Using an iterative design, intensive analysis identified and categorised patterns of looking and looking-related behaviours. This resulted in a typology of looking. Phase 2 subjected the typology to inter-rater reliability testing, with midwives as multiple raters (n = 24), using the typology to rate standardised tapes of mothers and newborns (n = 10).

Results

Phase 1 generated a one-page clinical tool (Maternal Looking Guide). This tool enables the assessment of mothers’ looking behaviour over six constructs and allocation to one of three overall categories of looking: those women who are doing well (comfortable), those who need a referral to an expert perinatal service (worrisome) and those to whom something extra could be offered (uncomfortable). In Phase 2 the Maternal Looking Guide achieved moderate reliability.

Conclusions

The Maternal Looking Guide is a practical, moderately reliable, clinical tool that can assist midwives and other perinatal workers identify those mothers who may need extra support at this critical perinatal window of opportunity. .

KEYWORDS:

• Maternal looking
• newborn
• mother-infant relationship
• clinical tool
• midwives

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the women and infants, midwives and perinatal colleagues who generously participated in this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.