The For Ever Book Project: Using a Storybook to Facilitate Postpartum Bonding

Purpose for the program: Maternal bonding is a critical task in the newborn period and one which has traditionally been entrusted to nurses.  Nursing has met this challenge through a variety of interventions, including keeping babies in close physical proximity to their mothers, helping mothers interpret the behavioral cues of their newborns, and creating a nurse-mother relationship that gives credibility to all other nursing interventions.  Nurses continually search for ways to support mothers’ “falling in love” with their newborns, the positive and critical beginning for a life-long secure mother-child attachment relationship.    The For Ever Program combines facilitation of bonding with promotion of early literacy. 

Proposed change: The envisioned change of the For Ever program is improved maternal (and paternal) bonding and long-term appreciation of a book which has had special meaning in the postpartum moment.  

Implementation, outcomes and evaluation: The nurse gives each mother a spiral-bound children’s book which has been especially designed for these tasks.  The book’s story line reinforces the importance of a mother’s responsiveness to the cues of her baby and the long-term effects of that responsiveness for the child.

… When I’m sleeping you gaze at me.  When I cry, you hold me close, and I feel  safe. When I open my eyes and look at you, you look back. You touch my toes...

 Brightly-colored drawings depict a baby who, while growing into a young child, searches for, then unites with, his/her mom.   The For Ever book, written and illustrated by this nurse, is personalized with one page for writing the baby’s birth information and another for attaching a family photo which can be taken by the nurse at the bedside with an instant camera or suggested for the family to add later.    Evaluating the importance of this program, requires an interim time of several months to understand how the book and its message have been used over  time .  The For Ever Program hypothesizes that the personalizing features of the book will be an enticement for it to be read and valued, even in families where literacy is not a priority.   Evaluation is planned for 6 months after hospital discharge via a phone call to the mother to answer a short list of questions about the use of and interest in the book.

Implications for nursing practice: The For Ever Program offers the nurse a tool to facilitate maternal bonding while enriching the postpartum experience and strengthening family literacy. 

Keywords: newborn, maternal-child attachment, maternal bonding