The delivery room: Is it a safe place? A hermeneutic analysis of women's negative birth experiences

• This paper implies a theoretical understanding of women's negative experiences in the delivery room.
• Subtle experiences of being under surveillance in an alienating environment can have a major impact on birthing women.
• This paper explores how the birth environment and its design can create experiences leading to later fear of childbirth in women.

BackgroundWomen's negative experiences in the delivery room can have significance for later fear of childbirth. Therefore, it is important to critically evaluate the care during childbirth. The aim was to gain a deeper understanding of women's negative experiences in the delivery room.MethodsThis study is based on original data from three qualitative studies on Swedish women's experiences of fear of childbirth. Data were collected from interviews with 21 women; 15 pregnant women (6 + 9) with intense fear of childbirth, and six women who had experienced intense fear of childbirth 7–11 years prior to the interview. The analysis had a hermeneutic approach, with focus on the women's descriptions of their previous negative birth experiences.FindingsThe interpretation showed that in the delivery room the women were objects of surveillance, and they endured suffering related to the care during childbirth. This involves experiences of midwives as uncaring, feelings of being suppressed, unprotected and lacking safety, of feeling disconnected and of the body as incompetent in giving birth. The birth environments are understood as power structures, containing views of women's birthing bodies as machines, and delivery rooms as surveillance environments, involving interventions such as foetal heart monitoring, induction and augmentation of labour.ConclusionsThe delivery room was, for these women, a place creating fear of childbirth. To avoid negative birth experiences and future fear, women must be offered not only medical, but also emotional and existential safety in the delivery room.