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Table 4 Reflecting on Experience

From: Concurrent analysis of choice and control in childbirth

Interviews

literature

I'd definitely choose to come in [to hospital] when I was ready.... I mean most first time parents I think probably want to stay in where as people that have been there before probably want to go home. (Interview 5)

The amount of choice and control I felt I had in each of these births varied, and not as might be expected in the form of a positive correlation between experience and confidence; my fourth birth was in many respects as 'taken over' and managed as the first. (Stockill 2007, p574)

I'd probably come home [next time], because you know what's going on then don't you. People feel more comfortable in their own homes. I think that's the difference when it's your first one and you're young, you don't know what's coming erm, probably with your second one you'd be alright to go home, you'd know when to say 'I think now I need to go back for the pain' or whatever. Next time I would come home.(Interview 4)

Maybe I was more courageous with the fourth because the previous

one had been a fast and good birth...(Viisainen 2001, p1116)

There's a lot of pressure especially when it's your second baby I think you don't realise how in a sense it's easier to have a first baby, than it is for subsequent babies because you're torn between wanting to do your best for the baby you're having and the one that's left at home its quite a difficult scenario isn't it?(Interview 5)

You see things totally different afterwards, you have another way of understanding, you accept things differently, you become stronger, you can cope with things better than before, before petty details could ruin life, and now you just shake it off your shoulders, you don't become another personality, but you mature and become a stronger personality, when you've had a baby and have gone through that pain. I think that is the purpose of it, what the meaning of life is. I think it is to protect our children, to be stronger, a way of managing everyday life and become stronger, and that it is a life from your own flesh and blood and that too helps you to go through the delivery. (Interview 2) (Lundgren & Dahlberg, 1998)

 

...we were talking for some time but because I had bad experience with N I was scared (McCourt and Pearce 2000, p150)