Factors associated with postpartum/PPT anxiety have been insufficiently investigated.

To identify correlates of PPT anxiety.

201 3-months postpartum women completed the Portuguese versions of Postpartum Depression Screening Scale (PDSS), Beck Depression Inventory/BDI-II, Profile of Mood States, Difficult Infant Temperament Questionnaire/DITQ, Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale and questions on sociodemographic variables, Lifetime history of insomnia/LTHD, Lifetime history of depressive symptomatology/LTHDS, Current insomnia, Health perception/HP, Stress perception/SP, Perceived social support/PSS, Quality of life/QOL, Health problem/complication postpartum, Sensibility to hormonal fluctuations, Type of delivery and Type of feeding. Postpartum anxiety was measured with the Anxiety/Insecurity (AI) subscale of the PDSS.

AI significantly correlated with LTHDS (rS=.32), LHI (rS=.18), Current insomnia (rS=.32), BDI-II (r=.76), SP (rS=.38), PSS (rS=.25), Perceived QOL (rS=.37), Health perception (rS=.29), Health problem in the postpartum (rS=.26), Negative Affect/NA (r=.66), Positive Affect/PA (r=.58), Conditional Acceptance/CA (r=.29) and DIT (r=.38) (all p< .01). Mean comparisons revealed that women with vs. without LHDS, with vs. without LTHI, good sleepers vs. with insomnia syndrome, high vs. low SP, low vs. high PSS, bad/very bad vs. good/very good QOL, bad/very bad vs. good/very good HP, high (< M+1DP) vs. low (>M-1DP) DIT, CA, NA and low vs. high PA had significantly higher mean scores in AI (all p< .01). Linear regression model composed of all correlated variables explained 53.7% of AI variance and showed that NA, PA and DIT are significant (p< .05) predictors of AI.

Our findings are in accordance with previous research and contribute to the progress on this topic.