Table 2 Summary of women’s views on which technique(s) they preferred

Head down or the push technique

… probably the ones where the pushing and the head down tilt one, feels a bit more natural, I would say …. cos it feels like you’re, for the way you described it, unless I have misunderstood it, it feels like me, as the mother who’s trying to give birth to my child, I still am trying to give birth to my child with some more assistance. Whereas, these feel completely, the power’s more out of my hands a little bit. Yeah. (P1)

Tydeman tube

… I prefer the tube because the doctor would be holding on to the bottom … and the air as well, will release a suction, so cos that will have a benefit over just using your hand because they’ll be able to get rid of the suction with the air … the hand you have better control … (P2)

Fetal pillow

I suppose this one [pillow] would be better than that [tube]. ...this pillow it seems, it looks erm, I don’t know about the right word, don’t look as hard as the tube … I think to be pushing on a baby’s soft skull. I think they’ve had enough sort of trauma down there already and the head’s getting squashed. And then to be coming from that way pushing them up … but maybe the pillow feels like a soft sort of ‘fabric’. (P3)

Tydeman tube or the Fetal pillow

Any of those techniques would be preferable to having hands or really physically pulling on a baby … I think sometimes you can feel like you are being manhandled I think and people can be a bit rough (P4)

Um, possibly the pillow and the tube, maybe. I think the, I don’t know how to pronounce it, Patwardhan Method, is the furthest method away. That really seems like a very, very, within an emergency, an extra emergency kind of procedure to me. (P5)

… if I had a choice in terms of how, if that technique was gonna be used, I’d rather something like this, it would be slightly more gentle … than the other, like the push technique (P6)

Health professionals’ decision

None of them seem particularly unacceptable or you know, there was nothing that I thought, oh, I really wouldn’t want to have that done to me … … I would put my hand in the health professional to be choosing the right implement … cos you don’t really have a choice anyway. (P7)

Any technique

I suppose I would be happy with whatever you had to use really. I suppose you trust the doctor to make the right decision don’t you and whatever you need to do to make sure the baby is safe really. (P8)

I would go with anything. I’m quite trusting of medicine, and if something has to be done then that’s what has to be done, you know. (P9)