Poral Franz Gerard B

St. Paul University Iloilo, College of Nursing, Iloilo City, Philippines

Abstract Title:

POSTPARTUM EXPERIENCES AND MOTHERHOOD: JOURNEY OF ATI MOTHERS

Research Interests:

Indigenous mothers continue to experience persistent maternal health inequities despite global commitments to health equity. Yet while disparities in maternal outcomes have been widely documented, the lived meanings of postpartum healing, caring, and maternal becoming among Indigenous women remain insufficiently understood. Among the Ati, one of the earliest Indigenous Peoples in the Philippines, little is known about how mothers experience and make meaning of postpartum life within their cultural lifeworld. Guided by Max van Manen's hermeneutic phenomenology and informed by Leininger's Culture Care Diversity and Universality Theory, this study explored the lived postpartum experiences and meanings of motherhood among Ati mothers in Iloilo Province. A qualitative hermeneutic phenomenological design was employed. Purposive criterion-based and snowball sampling were used to recruit Ati mothers who had experienced childbirth during the postpartum period. Data were generated through in-depth conversational interviews and interpreted using phenomenological reflection and thematic writing to uncover the essential meanings embedded within participants' lived experiences. Postpartum motherhood emerged as a culturally embodied journey of becoming, lived through bodily vulnerability, the ever-present possibility of bughat, a culturally recognized postpartum condition in the Philippines associated with weakness and relapse, Indigenous healing practices, caregiving demands, poverty, and the irreversible responsibility of nurturing new life. Rather than being experienced as an individual biological recovery, healing unfolded as a relational process in which mothers were first carried through ancestral knowledge, healing touch, ritual practices, kinship, spirituality, communal care, and intimate connections to place before becoming capable of carrying others. The narratives further revealed how Ati mothers continually navigated between Indigenous caring traditions and institutional healthcare, often encountering cultural incongruence, restrictions, and uncertainty while simultaneously drawing upon both systems to safeguard maternal and infant well-being. Despite enduring structural marginalization, motherhood remained sustained through intergenerational wisdom, reciprocal relationships of care, cultural continuity, and enduring maternal resilience. For Ati mothers, postpartum healing is not merely recovery after childbirth but a shared process of becoming in which vulnerability is transformed into maternal strength through relationships, culture, faith, and ancestral care. These findings extend caring science by illuminating Indigenous caring as an embodied practice of protection, ritual, touch, spirituality, kinship, and place while underscoring the imperative for culturally safe, Indigenous-responsive, and relationally grounded maternal healthcare that recognizes Indigenous knowledge as a vital foundation of maternal well-being. Keywords: Indigenous caring; Ati mothers; postpartum healing; hermeneutic phenomenology; caring science.