The Mother’s Tale – Women’s Experiences of Maternity Care in Australia

From 1 July 2020 to 30 October 2020, Maternal Health Matters Inc. (formerly Safe Motherhood for All Inc.) hosted a survey about women’s experiences of maternity care and the impact of their experience.

The survey was open to any woman who had given birth in the past 2 years.

Our results reveal that many women still do not receive respectful maternity care.

Overall only 54.4% of women we surveyed had the birth they wanted, compared to 62% of the women in the 2016 survey. Of interest is that 73% of women who had a vaginal birth had the birth they wanted compared to 41.9% of women who had an instrumental vaginal birth and 30% of women who had a caesarean section.

The majority of women believed that their childbirth experiences affected their self-image and relationships with their baby and their partner. A significant proportion (30%) of these women believed that the effect on how they felt about themselves was negative; while 14% of women stated it impacted negatively on their relationship with their baby.

To access click The Report or paste the link into your web browser – https://maternalhealthmatters.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Dignity-Survey-Safe-Motherhood-for-All-Circulated-2021.pdf