Are Multiparous Mothers more Skilled than Primiparous Mothers in Recognising their Newborn?

Abstract

A primiparous group of mothers was compared to a multiparous group in terms of their ability to accurately recognise isolated physical features of their newborns within 48 hours of birth. An “album” was constructed consisting of 6 pages, each with 5 slots marked A-E exposing a feature (1 feature per page) from photographs beneath.

Of the 5 features presented, 4 were from unfamiliar babies and the fifth from the mother’s own baby. Mothers were presented with this album and asked to select which of the slots showed their baby’s feature. No difference was found between the two groups in their recognition performance. Overall, hairline-forehead was the only feature to be recognised more than expected by chance (p≤0.002) and it was accurately recognised significantly more than any other feature, except for the eyes where the difference only approached significance.