PSYCHOSOCIAL ADJUSTMENT AND THE QUALITY OF THE MOTHER-CHILD-RELATIONSHIP AT 4 MONTHS POSTPARTUM AFTER CONCEPTION BY IN-VITRO FERTILIZATION

Objective: To examine psychological adjustment to early motherhood at 4 months postpartum in mothers who conceived by IVF-ET. Design: Contro lled clinical study. Setting: Healthy human volunteers in an academic research environment. Patient(s): Sixty-five primiparous women undergo ing IVF-ET and 62 age-matched primiparous women with no history of inf ertility. Intervention(s): Completion of questionnaires. interviews. a nd videotaped interaction. Main Outcome Measure(s): Maternal self-repo rts of psychosocial adjustment and behavioral ratings of quality of mo ther-infant interaction based on a videotaped observation scored blind to IVF-ET status. Result(s): Mothers who conceived by IVF-ET did not differ from control mothers on measures of anxiety, postnatal depressi on, marital satisfaction, or use of support services. However, they re ported lower self-esteem and lower maternal self-efficacy, and they ra ted their infants as more temperamentally difficult. (Ratings of tempe rament difficulty for the infants of mothers who conceived by IVF-ET a re within the normal range when compared with Australian normative dat a for this age group.) The videotapes revealed no group differences in maternal behaviors, but the infants of mothers who conceived by IVF-E T displayed more negative behaviors in response to an interactive stre ss. Group differences were accounted for largely by those mothers who underwent more than one treatment cycle and by their infants. Conclusi on(s): Overall, the results are reassuring for parents who conceive by IVF-ET. However, specific adjustment measures reveal some minor diffi culties and suggest that: mothers who conceive by IVF-ET may benefit f rom increased support in the early postpartum months. (C) 1997 by Amer ican Society for Reproductive Medicine.