Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Sep 15, 2018
Date Accepted: Nov 20, 2018
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
How Women Evaluate Birth Challenges: An Analysis of Online Birth Stories
ABSTRACT
Background:
Birth stories provide an intimate glimpse into women’s birth experiences, in their own words. Understanding the emotions elicited in women by certain types of behaviors during labor and delivery could help those in the healthcare community provide better emotional care for laboring women.
Objective:
The objective of the study was to understand which supportive reactions and behaviors contributed to negative or positive emotions among women in regards to their labor and delivery experience.
Methods:
We sampled ten women’s stories from a popular blog that described births that strayed from the plan. Ninety challenging events that occurred during labor and delivery were identified. Each challenge had an emotionally positive, negative, or neutral evaluation by the woman. We classified supportive and unsupportive behaviors in response to these challenges and examined their association with the woman’s emotional appraisal of the challenges.
Results:
Four types of behaviors were identified: informational inclusion, decisional inclusion (mostly by healthcare providers), practical support, and emotional support (mostly by partners). Supportive reactions were not associated with emotional appraisal; however, unsupportive reactions were associated with women appraising the challenge negatively (Fisher Exact Test, P = .02).
Conclusions:
While supportive behaviors did not elicit any particular emotion, unsupportive behaviors did cause women to view challenges negatively. Patients should be encouraged to express their needs at every opportunity, particularly when challenges present themselves during labor, and healthcare professionals should strive to cater to them.
Citation
