Postpartum emotional fertility intentions in Ethiopia: an insight and correlates from a national women and newborns cohort study

One-year postpartum emotional fertility intention of being unhappier is more pronounced in Ethiopia which calls for enhancing intended and spaced pregnancies by ensuring women reproductive health decision making autonomy. Activities and efforts that promote spaced pregnancies, and diversifying access to postpartum contraceptives are likely to improve the level of one-year postpartum emotional fertility intention. Activities and interventions that enable women to decide over their contraceptive use alongside patient-centered contraceptive use counseling could also contributed to the improvement of one-year postpartum emotional fertility intention as well. The study findings implied that awareness creation on and availing the specific inter-pregnancy contraceptive services and mental health preconception care packages could also contribute in addressing the varying level of one-year postpartum emotional fertility intention. The other implication of the findings calls for strengthening postpartum contraceptive counseling and intensifying actual service provision. Besides, enabling high parity women to use contraceptive through access and diversification of the methods could help in this regard. Moreover, installing the inter-pregnancy preconception care packages in the health care system, enhancing informed contraceptive use decision making and improving one-year postpartum contraceptive uptake are imperative. Provision of one-year post-partum contraceptive could reduce maternal and newborns morbidity and mortality through spacing, improving women´s emotional and mental health in the postpartum period. These activities and interventions are very critical to improve postpartum emotional fertility intention.