Women’s evaluation of their birth experiences analysed by means of word frequency and thematic analysis

Given the significance of the birth experience on women’s and babies’ well-being, assessing and understanding maternal satisfaction is important for providing optimal care.

The aim of this study was to explore through a gender perspective the circumstances attributed to both women’s assessment of a positive birth experience and those which contribute to a lack of satisfaction with their birth experience.

Based on the positive, ambiguous, and the negative birth evaluations, the researchers identified three themes:

• Grateful women and nurturing midwives doing gender together;
• Managing ambiguous feelings by sympathising with the midwife; and
• The midwifery model of relational care impeded by the labour care organisation.

In addition to elucidating the impact of institutional, i.e., medical, practices and discourses on childbirth, there is also the need to consider how birthing women’s internalised sense of gender, i.e., the way individuals behave, and are expected to behave, according to societal and cultural norms, interplay with and affect their birth experiences.

 

Link to the study: https://bmcpregnancychildbirth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12884-021-03758-w