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Table 5 Type of support provided by birth companions to women and providers

From: Birth companionship in a government health system: a pilot study in Kigoma, Tanzania

Support to women

Support to providers

Emotional

Informational

Practical/instrumental

• Comfort/support

• Encouragement (“sweet words”; will deliver safe by the will of God)

• Reduce worries and give hope

• Talk to women

• Stay with women all the time

• Help women feel “free”

• Becoming a frienda

• Give advice

• Remind women about hygiene

• Translation

• Educate women on breastfeeding, family planning, how to care for newborna

• Massages

• Help women exercise

• Hold hand

• Help women into bed

• Support to urinate/vomit

• Hold legs/shoulders during delivery

• Support women to walk after delivery

• Accompany to antenatal careb

• Encourage good diet

• Help pack/carry things from homeb

• Secure transportb

• Bring tea and food

• • Clean women/help them get dressed after birth

• Wash clothes

• Carry the baby or belongings, and help women to postnatal ward after delivery

• Help contact family

• Carry things home once dischargedb

• Cook for womenb

• Alert providers when women need help/are ready to push

• Keep women calm

• Prepare delivery bed, clean bed after delivery

• Help bring water/support providers to clean women

• Reduce provider workload/give them time to do other things

• Explain/reinforce provider instructions to women

• Relay information to health providers (e.g., previous fistula)

• Act as a link between providers and relatives

• Welcome women to ward, collect antenatal care cards, show them bedsa

• Help/remind nurses to take medical history and complete registera

• Do light cleaning tasks in labor warda

• Hold trays and bring supplies to providers, sometimes fetching from other wards or storea

• Tell DBCs not to give local herbs or tell women to push too soona

• Provide company/become a friend to providersa

  1. Abbreviations: DBC Desired birth companion; OBC On-call birth companion
  2. Source: Focus group discussions and key informant interviews (April, July and December 2018)
  3. aOBC only
  4. bDBC only