Page 131 - Pro-active Management of Women’s Health after Cardiometabolic Complicated Pregnancies

3.3 Preferences for postpartum lifestyle counseling| 129
program until completely recovered from their pregnancy. The idea that prolonged guidance might decrease a woman’s fear of recurrence of the condition and hence their threshold for a next pregnancy, was mentioned as a reason for the desire for lifestyle support until the next pregnancy.
Particularly women who experienced a severe complication expressed a need for more and longer physical and psychological guidance after their complicated pregnancy as part of postpartum counseling: “Such counseling is a step in the right direction towards better follow-up care”.
Face-to-Face Counseling
All women indicated that they would like to receive postpartum lifestyle counseling from a health care specialist. Face-to-face counseling from a health care specialist was perceived as effective and motivating. Women said that they would feel motivated to show the counselor what progress they had made. They would like to receive support from the counselor and they would like to receive reminders of why it is important to improve their lifestyle. “Regularly being reminded of what you are doing it for would help”. Furthermore, they would like the idea of their lifestyle being monitored by a health care specialist; they would prefer regular moments of evaluation; and they would like to be able to observe progress from participating in lifestyle counseling.
A preferred counsellor was reported to be someone who had sufficient and extensive knowledge about lifestyle, and about the pregnancy complications and their consequences. Women mentioned that the counsellor must be experienced, and should be familiar with experiences of other women who had the same complications during pregnancy. “It must be someone who knows how to put our experiences into perspective.”
Several health care specialists were mentioned as potential counselors: