No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Giving birth to a child can have a major impact on a woman's feelings about herself and her newborn, influencing perceptions and interactions, and having both short and long term implications. In this study the effect of an experience of labour and delivery discrepant or not discrepant with expectations on mood and level of distress postpartum were investigated. / Thirty primaparas were pretested on a Labor and Delivery Expectation scale and posttested on an Experience scale two days postpartum. Two mood measures and a Distress scale were administered at this time. The influences of formal preparation for childbirth and of personality variables on the childbirth experience and postpartum mood were also investigated. / It was found that a positive mood and low distress postpartum were related to an experience of labour and delivery better than had been expected. An experience more negative than expected resulted in low mean scores for mood with high distress levels.

This study examines global incentives to reduce maternal mortality, namely the fifth Millenium Developmnet Goal to reduce maternal mortality with 75% by 2015. More specifically it examines maternal mortality and obstetric care in situations of emergency. When exposed to extreme situations the risks of negative pregnancy- and delivey outcomes are increased. Data was collected from seconday sources and from interviews with health staff with experiences from humanitarian work in the field. The findings were analyzed using a theoretical framework explaining maternal mortality be referring to both direct and indirect causes. The two theoretical models used in the study are similar and reminds of each other when explaining maternal mortality. One is based on the assumption that an obstetric complication has occurred and differnt delays in recieving care is the main cause maternal mortality, whilst the other theory is more in depth and elaborates the underlying causes. The first theory is used a base tto analyze the data after which the other theory is applied in order to introdue a deeper dimension to the analysis. The findings suggest that direct causes accounts for 80 per cent of all maternal deaths, homorrhage being the largest, including in disasters. Further causes are infections, unsafe abortions, eclampsia and obstructed labor. Also, underlying socail factors such as gender inequality indirectly has a negative impact on maternal mortality. Moreover, findings suggest that obstetric care is prioritized in disaster relief response.

Background: Some women develop symptoms of posttraumatic stress following childbirth. There is preliminary evidence that cognitive variables may be associated with the development or maintenance of these symptoms. Research indicates that symptoms of posttraumatic stress following childbirth may have negative consequences for mother-infant relationship outcomes. However, these may be attributable to comorbid symptoms of depression. Further evidence is required regarding the nature of the relationships between these variables. Methods: An internet based cross-sectional questionnaire design was employed to test hypothesised relationships between maternal attachment experiences, metacognition, symptoms of PTSD and depression and perceptions of the mother-infant bond, in an analogue sample of new mothers. Structural equation modelling was employed for the principal analysis. Results: The final structural model demonstrated a good fit to sample data. Metacognition fully mediated the relationship between attachment experiences and postnatal psychological outcomes. The association between posttraumatic stress and maternal perceptions of the mother-infant bond was fully mediated by depression. Conclusions: Metacognition may have a key role in the development and maintenance of postnatal psychological distress. If clinically significant postnatal depression is identified, screening for posttraumatic stress is strongly indicated.

The primary focus of this research was on the emotional status of expectant mothers and expectant fathers. A comparison between couples who were currently expecting a child and couples who had had a child within one calendar year of the testing period was made. Specifically, expectant mothers were compared to present mothers and expectant fathers were compared to present fathers on three personality variables: the degree of emotional stability, the perception of the locus of internal-external control, and parental role identification. This comparison was made to determine whether men and women who were currently expecting a child would differ significantly from similar men and women who had already had their child in relation to the three selected variables.Participants in Lamaze prepared childbirth training were selected as the population to be studied. Members of one of four Lamaze prepared childbirth classes selected as the population for the research were asked to take part in the study. Twenty-one couples agreed to participate; the 21 pregnant women comprised the expectant mother sample, while the 21 husbands of the pregnant women comprised the expectant father sample. In order to compare the expectant parent samples to an appropriate control group, 100 former Lamaze participants who received their training from the same Lamaze instructors who provided instruction to the expectant parent samples were contacted and asked to take part in the study. Twenty-one couples volunteered; the 21 women comprised the present mothers sample, and the 21 men made up the present fathers sample. All subjects in the expectant parents samples were tested on the second meeting of their regularly scheduled Lamaze class. Those couples in the present parents samples attended a specially scheduled testing period.Six hypotheses were formulated relative to emotional stability, perception of the locus of internal-external control and parental role identification. The multiple choice Inquiry items of the Blacky Pictures Test served as the measure of emotional stability. Each subject's perception of the locus of control was measured by the Internal-External Locus of Control Scale (I-E Scale). An additional measure was obtained to determine whether a subject was unusually involved with the parental role. A writer-designed adaptation of the Blacky Pictures Test served as a measure of identification with the parental figures depicted on the Blacky Pictures Test illustrations. The adaptation consisted of the addition of the following question to the standard Inquiry items on each card: "With which character do you feel most involved on this card? Mama, Papa, Blacky, or Tippy?" Because the parent figures are depicted on only three of the 11 critical cards, four or more responses that indicated involvement (or identification) with the parental figures was considered to indicate unusual involvement with the parental figures. In addition to these three measurements, all subjects completed a demographic questionnaire.Statistical analyses were carried out to determine whether there were significant differences (p <.05) between the same sex samples. Results indicated two significant findings. Present fathers were found to be less emotionally stable than expectant fathers. In addition, the expectant mothers tended to identify significantly more often with the parental figures than did present mothers. All other measured variables failed to show significant differences. No significant differences were found between the expectant mother sample and the present mother sample in their perception of the locus of internal-external control; similarly expectant fathers and present fathers were not significantly different on the perception of control variable. Findings also indicated that no significant difference existed between the two father samples on the identification with the parental role variable. No significant difference was found between the two mother samples on the emotional stability variable.

Syftet med studien var att undersöka förekomst av gravida kvinnors upplevelse av förlossningsrädsla i relation till deras sociodemografiska, psykiatriska och obstetriska bakgrund samt önskat förlossningssätt. Metod. Förstföderskor och omföderskor som skrevs in på barnmorskemottagning tillfrågades om deltagande i studien och fick besvara två frågeformulär under graviditeten. Resultat. Totalt 776 kvinnor svarade på båda frågeformulären och svarsfrekvensen för de flesta frågor som användes till studien var över 92 %. I tidig graviditet upplevdes förlossningsrädsla av 12 % av kvinnorna i studien och av 15,5 % i sen graviditet. Nästan hälften av de med tidig upplevelse av förlossningsrädsla upplevde i slutet på graviditeten ingen eller liten rädsla. Upplevd förlossningsrädsla var vanligare bland kvinnor som tidigare varit gravida, omföderskor med erfarenhet av kejsarsnitt, kvinnor födda utanför Sverige och kvinnor som tidigare haft kontakt med psykiater och kurator. Kvinnor med upplevd förlossningsrädsla var mer benägna att önska kejsarsnitt än de som upplevde ingen eller liten rädsla. Av kvinnor med upplevd förlossningsrädsla hade omkring en fjärdedel under graviditeten varit i kontakt med Klaramottagningen, en mottagning med specialisering på förlossningsrädsla och en femtedel av dessa kvinnor rapporterade mot slutet av graviditeten ingen eller liten rädsla. Kontakt med Klaramottagningen hade även kvinnor som i tidig graviditet rapporterade ingen eller liten rädsla. Av dessa kvinnor rapporterade 45,8 % att de upplevde förlossningsrädsla i slutet på graviditeten. Konklusion. Former för hur identifiering, fördelning av vårdens resurser och utformning av stödet till gravida kvinnor och framförallt till de med upplevd förlossningsrädsla bäst sker kan utvecklas ytterligare.

No abstract available.

Childbirth is an essential part of reproductive politics which have largely focused on expanding choice for women’s reproductive lives. Childbirth in the west has been medicalised, which means that authoritative knowledge was moved into the hands of the patriarchal medical establishment through displacement of traditional midwives, casting women as ‘hysterical’ and inherently sick and seeing birth as a medical event and technology as the appropriate way to deal with birth and the body. In the United States, with surveillance and risk factors, each woman in labour is considered in medical danger and treated accordingly, curtailing women’s ability to make decisions about their bodies and birth. The alternative or natural childbirth movement has resisted this form of medicalised birth, but within the movement, pressure can also be found on women to perform femininity and achieve a perfect birth. A focus on choice is therefore limited without also considering structural factors. / Graduate