‘Had I gone into the office, they would have caught it a little bit sooner’: narrative problematics in U.S. pandemic birth stories

ABSTRACT Individuals who gave birth during the COVID-19 pandemic experienced an increased risk for premature births, stillbirths, depression, and lower access to care. Their stories provide valuable information that can inform clinical care, particularly due to loss of in-person support resulting from visitor restrictions in hospitals. Grounded in a theory of narrative problematics, we explored how elicited birth narratives were affected by COVID-19 and how stories can be used as material evidence to inform healthcare systems. We facilitated seven focus group discussions with 65 women from 19 states who had given birth between March and July 2020. Three themes emerged from our qualitative thematic analysis: (1) navigating disrupted access to healthcare; (2) experiencing loss of co-construction of birth experience; and (3) recognizing fissures in the mask-wearing master narrative. Practical implications for improving healthcare include developing spaces for individuals to process birth stories for cathartic benefit due to significant disruption, improving hospital policies about in-person support to avoid loss of co-construction of experience, and centering hospitals and the providers that work within them as audiences for interventions around preventive measures during a disease outbreak.