Journeying through confidence: A grounded theory study exploring women’s confidence for birth

Abstract

Supporting women’s psychological needs during pregnancy is an important aspect of providing good quality maternity care. In an attempt to support women’s psychological wellbeing during pregnancy, a local National Health Service Trust, developed Confident Birthing Workshops. These workshops aimed to try and increase pregnant women’s confidence for birth. Research exploring childbirth self-efficacy, fear of birth and childbirth expectations suggests that women’s confidence for birth is likely to affect their long-term psychological wellbeing. However, there has not been any research exploring women’s confidence for birth. This PhD therefore aimed to develop a theoretical understanding of the factors that women perceive to influence their confidence for birth, during pregnancy. It is then hoped that the local National Health Service Trust can use this understanding to support the Confident Birthing Workshops.

In order to develop a theoretical understanding of women’s confidence for birth, a constructivist grounded theory approach, using interviews and internet discussion forum data was taken. This data was subjected to grounded theory analysis and led to the development of a substantive ‘Journeying through confidence’ theory. The social processes within the theory are divided in to the following five categories: ‘Gathering and interpreting information while journeying through pregnancy’, ‘Relationship with pregnancy and baby’, ‘Preparing’, ‘Communicating’ and ‘Evaluating previous experiences’.

The ‘Journeying through confidence’ theory, is the first theory to provide an understanding of the factors that women perceive to influence their confidence for birth, during pregnancy. This theory has resulted in several suggestions to improve clinical practice, such as, changing the approach that maternity services currently adopt when creating birth plans with women. Further research is needed to explore what factors women perceive to influence their confidence for birth during labour and the postnatal period.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Emily, Victoria Fraser-Mackenzie: orcid.org/0000-0002-4143-1283

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