Understanding Mothers' Experiences of Very Low Birth Weight Infants Across the Childbirth Trajectory in Japan: A Retrospective Analysis Using Natural Language Processing

ABSTRACT Background Mothers of very low birth weight infants face various challenges during pregnancy and throughout the first postpartum year. This study aimed to describe the experiences of mothers of very low birth weight infants from gestation through their infants' first year of life. Methods We conducted a retrospective study using documents from a parent–child support class for very low birth weight infants (< 1500 g) held between 2003 and 2018 in Japan. The textual data consisted of notebook records documenting the mothers' experiences during pregnancy, their initial meeting with their infants, the neonatal intensive care unit stay, and the first postpartum year. The data were analyzed using a Japanese morphological analyzer and structural topic modeling. Results A total of 280 mothers (mean age, 34 years; 68.2% primiparous) met the inclusion criteria. Topic modeling identified five to seven topics across each period of the mother's experiences. The topics at first encounter with their babies and neonatal intensive care unit stay were characterized by terms that may reflect apologetic or self‐blaming expressions. Conversely, between 6 and 12 months postpartum, the focus was on more routine concerns, such as everyday caregiving. Conclusion The findings provide a descriptive overview of mothers' narratives and may serve as a foundation for further qualitative and clinical research examining how mothers of very low birth weight infants experience pregnancy, neonatal intensive care unit hospitalization, and child‐rearing.