Poster #101 - Benefits of Prenatal Kick Counting Part 2: Examining Postnatal Reaching and Parent Talk

• In Event: Poster Session 09

Abstract

Fetal kick counting (FKC) is the practice of asking mothers to attend to and quantify fetal movements. Prior results regarding the impact of FKC on maternal mental health are mixed, ranging from no effect (Delaram et al., 2017) to positive effects on general health, anxiety and depressive symptoms, and insomnia (Saastad et al., 2012; el-Sayed et al., 2018). A recent study from our lab examined the relation between FKC, maternal mental health, and mother-infant attachment and engagement. Results from this initial study revealed no impact of FKC on maternal mental health or parent-reported infant motor development but improved mother-infant engagement at 3 months postpartum (Owens & Libertus, 2022). The current study extends our previous findings by measuring infant motor development and parent engagement via direct observation rather than parent report. Specifically, we examine whether engaging in FKC during pregnancy has a measurable impact on parent talk and infant object exploration around 3 and 4.5 months postpartum. Using the same quasi-experimental design as Owens and Libertus (2022), pregnant mothers either enrolled into our study during pregnancy and completed FKC or enrolled after their child was born and did not complete FKC. To account for this non-random assignment, we used propensity score matching based on maternal and paternal education, household income, infant age, and infant gender. The final sample consists of 13 well-matched pairs of FKC and non-FKC mother-child dyads (n=26). Between group comparisons replicate the findings reported by Owens and Libertus (2022) showing no significant differences in maternal subclinical depression and anxiety [F(1,24)=0.13, p=.723] or in parent-reported infant gross motor [F(1,24)=0.63, p=.435], fine motor [F(1,24)=0.85, p=.365], or perception-action scores [F(1,24)=0.16, p=.690]. Therefore, we conclude that maternal engagement in FKC does not impact maternal mental health (Figure 1) or global infant motor development (Figure 2) postpartum. For the proposed presentation, we aim to contrast behavior of infants across the two groups on infants’ reaching skills and parent talk during free-play engagement with their child. Specifically, we will compare infants’ object exploration behavior and quantity and quality of parent talk during free-play interactions. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) will be used to determine whether participation in FKC predicts an increased rate of change in infant object exploration behavior and parent talk over an eight-week period. We theorize that maternal engagement in FKC may increase parent awareness of infant motor movements and in turn improve parent engagement in motor-focused activities 3 months postpartum. Therefore, we hypothesize that parent-infant dyads that participated in FKC during the third trimester of pregnancy will differ significantly on motor abilities and verbal engagement as compared to dyads who did not engage in FKC. This work has implications for understanding lasting effects of parent experiences during pregnancy on parent-infant relationships and infant development postpartum.

Authors

• Darcy Smith, University of Pittsburgh
  Presenting Author

• Klaus Libertus, University of Pittsburgh