Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Pediatrics and Parenting
Date Submitted: Sep 28, 2018
Date Accepted: Jan 30, 2019
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
What Women with Disabilities Write in Personal Blogs about Pregnancy and Early Motherhood: A Qualitative Analysis of Blogs
ABSTRACT
Background:
Background:
More than 1 in 10 reproductive age women identify as having some type of disability. Most of these women are able to become pregnant and have similar desires for motherhood as women without disability. Disabled women, however, face greater stigma and stereotyping, additional risk factors, and may be less likely to receive adequate reproductive health care compared to their peers without disability. More and more individuals, including those with disability, are utilizing the internet to seek information and peer support. Blogs are one source of peer-to-peer social media engagement that may provide a forum for women with disability to both share and obtain peer-to-peer information and support. Even so, it is not clear what content about reproductive health and pregnancy/motherhood is featured in personal blogs authored by women with spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, spina bifida, and autism.
Objective:
Objective:
Our objective was to two-fold: 1) to examine the information being shared in blogs by women with four types of disability: spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, spina bifida, and autism about reproductive health, disability, healthcare, pregnancy, and motherhood; and 2) to classify the content of reproductive health experiences addressed by bloggers to better understand what they viewed as important.
Methods:
Methods:
Personal blogs were identified by searching Google for disability keywords “spinal cord injury,” “traumatic brain injury,” “spina bifida” and “autism,” and a variety of reproductive health keywords. The first 10 pages of each database search in Google, based on the relevance of the search terms, were reviewed and all blogs in these pages were included. Blogs were chosen for inclusion if they were written in English, published between 2013 – 2017, and written by the woman herself or her care partner (i.e., parent, spouse), and the blog posts described her experiences related to disability and reproductive health in the pre-pregnancy, prenatal, antepartum, intrapartum and/or postpartum periods. NVIVO was used to analyze both the blogs and corresponding comments.
Results:
Results:
Our search strategy identified a total of 125 blogs that met all inclusion criteria. A qualitative analysis identified four reproductive health themes featured in the blogs of women with disabilities: 1) (In)Accessible motherhood, 2) (Un)Supportive others, 3) Different, but not different; and 4) Society questioning motherhood.
Conclusions:
Conclusions:
This analysis of personal blogs about pregnancy and health care written by women with spinal cord injury, traumatic brain injury, and autism provides a glimpse into their experiences. The challenges faced by these women and the adaptations they made to successfully navigate pregnancy and early motherhood provide insights that can be used to shape future research.
Citation
