Introduction: Generally, through pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period the woman's body goes through a lot of physical and psychological changes. Stress and the effects of overwhelming experience of the latter may have a significant impact on women at these times. Purpose: The purpose of this diploma thesis is to define stress, all different types of stress, describe various models of stress in detail, show how these models of stress have actually evolved, introduce situations which cause a stress reaction, often called stress triggers or stressors, how to recognize stress, get to know more about the positive and negative aspects of stress, as well as stress symptoms and its signs, the feelings you have when finding yourself in a stressful situation, describe the main key factors that affect the intensity when it comes to experiencing stress, physical responses taking place, the consequences caused by stress, the degree of control and choice when it comes to managing our stress situation in general through pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period. Research methods: In the herewith thesis the author is planning on applying the descriptive research method by means of which a detailed literature review of the technical and scientific literature review in this field is going to be studied and defined. When searching for the adequate scientific publications the author is going to help herself with the following databases: COBISS, CINAHL, Medline, DiKUL, ScienceDirect, PubMed, WileyOnlineLibrary, Google Scholar, Google Books and Cochrane. The author is planning on looking for data in the scientific publications, recently published. The qualitative meta-synthesis is going to be carried out with the help of the evaluation of the studies found and at the same time based on the four-scale evaluation designed by the two authors, Eccles and Mason. With the help of the meta-synthesis the two following statements will be processed: one stating that stress in fact has an effect on preterm delivery and the other affirming that stress has a significant impact on breastfeeding in the early neonatal period. Results: the meta-synthesis of the 9 studies revealed that stress has a significant impact on pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period, especially as far as facing a higher risk factors for preterm labor and breastfeeding problems is concerned. Discussion and decision: The level of stress a woman experiences through pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period has a significant effect on all these three periods in her life. Due to the fact that stress, especially the one present during the early postnatal period, has not been sufficiently investigated, there is an urgent need for further research in this area.
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