The psychosocial experience of traumatic birth in couples: an interpretative phenomenological study

ABSTRACT

Background

One-third of women report a psychologically traumatic event during birth; limited research exists on how couples experience and process self-reported traumatic birth.

Aims and objectives

This study aimed to examine the lived experience and psychosocial impact of traumatic birth in couples.

Methods

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to explore in-depth participants’ lived experience during and after traumatic childbirth. Four couples were recruited, from women experiencing vaginal deliveries in the public hospital system in Australia during the past 5 years. Women and men were interviewed individually.

Results

Three superordinate themes were identified: ‘Compassionless care’ (experiences of being dismissed, devalued and degraded by care providers), ‘Violation and subjugation’ (women’s bodies and birthing experiences being violated) and ‘Parenting after birth trauma’ (challenges in caring for a newborn following trauma and recovery from trauma).

Discussion

Couples described care providers’ actions as a major contributing factor to trauma experiences. Couples contextualised care in terms of under-resourced wards and perceived women were treated as a means to an end. Women and men both described feeling fearful, distressed and devalued. Following birth trauma, individual cognitive factors, such as negative self-evaluations and avoidance of the trauma memory interacted with family system to shape trauma-related distress.

Conclusions

Future research would benefit from highlighting the systemic context in which compassionless care occurs, and the family system in which trauma is experienced and processed. Findings reinforce that psychosocial safety must be considered in addition to physical safety for both women and men in maternity care practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Birth trauma
• childbirth
• maternity care
• interpretative phenomenological analysis
• parenting

Acknowledgments

We thank the couples who shared their stories with us, the Centre of Perinatal Excellence for assisting with recruitment and Associate Professor Christine Catling and Brooke Owen for their feedback from a midwifery perspective on the study design.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research was part of the primary researchers’ Master of Clinical Psychology at the University of Technology, Sydney. Financial support was provided for the videoconferencing software.