Vietnamese women's cultural beliefs and practices related to the postpartum period

Objective: to describe cultural beliefs and practices related to the postpartum period among Vietnamese women in Ho Chi Minh City.

Design: a descriptive cross-sectional study using triangulation.

Setting: the Postpartum Clinic, Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of a university hospital in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Participants: 115 Vietnamese women, 95 in the first group and 20 in the second group.

Data collection and analysis: a questionnaire was used with the first group and a semi-structured in-depth interview was used with the second group. Both groups were subjected to the same four open-ended questions. The data obtained were first analysed separately by use of qualitative content analysis and then cross-checked.

Findings: four categories were identified: hygiene, behavioural precautions (lying by a fire, keeping warm after birth, staying indoors and resting in bed, and avoiding house work and sexual activity), dietary precautions, and breast feeding and lactation.

Key conclusion and implications for practice: traditional beliefs and practices, often beneficial to the women and their babies but sometimes potentially harmful, greatly influenced the Vietnamese women during the postpartum period. Therefore, health-care professionals need to give appropriate information and care to the women and their families while paying due attention to the cultural context. These demands make it imperative that knowledge about cultural values be included in their education, not least in Western countries which have become multicultural.