Digital support for expecting parents: Ensuring quality content for pre-pregnancy, pregnancy, and delivery stages

Introduction

Long before a kid is born, a new life begins. The fertilized ovum grows inside the uterus of the woman. Pregnancy is the term used to describe this stage of prenatal development. The prospective mother needs to take good care of herself in order to guarantee the health and welfare of the unborn child. Unfortunately, many important aspects of pregnancy, particularly for first-time mothers, are not well understood by women. The knowledge of young women on conception, fertility, the ovulation cycle, and gestational weight is inadequate, according to Downs et al. (2014) [4] and Lundsberg et al. (2014) [8] . Additionally, they lack sufficient knowledge of maternal health-related topics (Mbada et al. 2014; Williams et al. 2016) [10,17] . Findings of a study by Samanta et al. (2024a) [13] also showed a clear discrepancy between already available information on digital platform and needs of mothers for guidance. Inaccurate information leads to bad habits, which negatively impact the health of the mother and the child. These negative effects include growth retardation, low birth weight, infant and maternal mortality, and nutritional deficiencies. Mothers' and their children's health and wellbeing are enhanced by having a solid grasp of pregnancy (Chan & Chen, 2019) [3] . For the sake of both the mother and the unborn child, it is therefore ideal for a mother to have adequate and accurate knowledge about every aspect of pregnancy. Mothers and mothers-in-law provide young women with a wealth of common and important information on prenatal care. They unknowingly and casually instruct the next generation of mothers by discussing their pregnancy experiences. The joint family system has been superseded by the nuclear family. Many couples live far away from their family members. This means that the pregnant woman may not always be able to get advice from her mother-inlaw. Additionally, modern science and the internet are trusted more by the current generation than conventional wisdom. As a result, young expectant women use digital technology and media to acquire the information they need. Smartphones are essential in the modern world. Our lives are now dominated by internet searches. Young parents are increasingly depending on mobile gadgets and the internet for efficient parenting. Digital media has become a vital source of prenatal information for women since it enables mothers to communicate with one another via apps, social media, the internet, etc. (Lupton, 2017) [9] . It is easy to use, responds quickly, saves time, and offers valuable data at a very low cost. As mobile phone usage rises every day, apps have become an important and useful source of information for pregnant mothers (Lee & Moon, 2016) [7] . These pregnancy applications help new moms learn about pregnancy, labour, and health information (Wang et al. 2019) [16] . A large number of apps are already available for users but, Indian women do not find them suitable for them. These apps provide insufficient amount of information on only a www.extensionjournal.com few aspects of pregnancy and delivery. Study conducted by Yadav et al. (2023) [19] , also revealed that women felt strong need of knowledge regarding health care during pregnancy. However, previous research conducted by Samanta et al. (2024b) [14] also revealed that majority of currently available apps lacked information indicating that they were failing to meet the demands of their intended users. The only purpose for this study is only to analyze the pregnancy apps so that an appropriate app fulfilling the needs of Indian women can be developed. Therefore, it is very important to create a pregnancy app which can provide valid and reliable information starting from pre-pregnancy period to postpartum period.

Methods

Sample Selection

The sample of the study was digital sample i.e., 40 pregnancy apps available for free download on Google Play Store which were then analyzed for their content and its quality.

Data collection

For data collection of above-mentioned digital sample, total 40 pregnancy apps were downloaded and installed on an Android phone which were available on Google Play Store for free of cost.

Data Analysis

Each app was test used and critically assessed by the researcher for the content relevance and quality using selfstructured schedule. The data collected was then classified and tabulated for meaningful results as per the objective of the study. For interpretation of the results, mainly two statistical measures were used viz. Frequency and Percentage.

Results and Discussion

Information on pre-pregnancy, pregnancy and delivery The findings of the information on pregnancy symptoms, indicators, and home tests are shown in Table 2. The results above show that the majority of the applications lacked information on danger indications throughout pregnancy, delivery, and after birth (87.5%) and on home pregnancy tests (92.5%). More than two-thirds of the applications did not include information on pregnancy symptoms (67.5%) and signs (70.0%), whereas others provided this information. 3 displays the findings of data pertaining to fetal development. While the majority of the apps (97.5%) lacked information on weekly infant appearance, 70.0 percent lacked content on growth and development across all trimesters, and 60.0 percent lacked information on a week-by-week pregnancy calendar, the remaining applications did. Results of the information on delivery have been shown in Table 4. Maximum apps did not offer information for the would-be parents on various aspects of delivery i.e. getting ready for birth together (95.0%), tips for natural labour (85.0%), ways to prevent cesarean section (95.0%), getting ready for a planned cesarean (85.0%), presence of father in delivery room (95.0%) and birth (85.0%). One-fourth of the www.extensionjournal.com apps (75.0%) did not have information on packing hospital bag and two-third of them (65.0%) lacked information on time for labour pain. Rest of the apps provided content on above given aspects.

Discussion

As results of this study concluded that already available apps on Google Play Store do not provide that much quality content on all aspects of pregnancy. Therefore, the present study found a noticeable gap between needs of Indian mothers and the information provided on digital platforms.

As per previous researches conducted by Yadav et al. (2023) [19] and Samanta et al. (2023) [15] , mothers demand for comprehensive information related to all aspects during pregnancy as well as infant care. Women demand for detailed content because they do not have knowledge about various aspects of pregnancy. Women of young age have poor knowledge regarding conception, fertility and ovulation cycle while older women tend to believe in myths and misconceptions (Lundsberg et al. 2014) [8] . [6,11,18] . Expecting mothers also lack knowledge on gestational weight gain (Downs et al. 2014) [4] . Bita et al. (2014) [1] also found that women's level of knowledge about safe and physiological delivery was very low. But on the other hand, study conducted by Yadav et al. (2023) [19] observed that women felt very much need of information on all general aspects such as getting pregnant, signs and symptoms, pregnancy tests, discomforts, danger signs and common myths of pregnancy but majority of the existing analyzed apps did not have content on these aspects. So, these apps are not suitable to fulfill the needs of Indian mothers. Only a small number of pregnancy apps are excellent (Brown et al. 2019) [2] . Pregnancy apps that women can trust are in high demand (Hearn et al. 2013; Qing & Weiying, 2019) [5,12] . As a result, there is an urgent need of developing an app for pregnant women in Indian context which cover all these information in English as well as regional languages.

Conclusion

Pregnancy is most crucial time period when expectant mothers need their family around them for guidance and support. But due to changing family patterns now-a-days, sometimes pregnant women have to stay alone during some days of their pregnancy period. So, women generally go for digital guidance in these situations such as pregnancy applications. Thus, the study was conducted to assess these already available apps on Google Play Store and the study found that these apps are not providing quality content on all aspects of pregnancy such as pre-pregnancy care, during pregnancy and at the time of delivery. These apps do not provide source of information due to which users often put them in questionable category for their credibility. Hence, these apps are not suitable to fulfill the needs of Indian mothers. Therefore, there is an utmost need of developing a pregnancy app specially for Indian expectant mothers.

References

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