Abstract
Birth cultures have been transforming in recent years mainly affecting birth care and its socio-political contexts. This situation has affected the feeling of well-being in women at the time of giving birth. For this reason, our objective was to analyse the social meaning that women ascribe to home births in the Chilean context. We conducted thirty semi-structured interviews with women living in diverse regions ranging from northern to southern Chile, which we carried out from a theoretical-methodological perspective of phenomenology and situated knowledge. Qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyse the information collected in the field work. A qualitative thematic analysis produced the following main theme: 1) Home birth journeys. Two sub-categories: 1.1) Making the decision to give birth at home, 1.2) Giving birth: (re)birth. And four sub-categories also emerged: 1.1.1) Why do I need to give birth at home? 1.1.2) The people around me don't support me; 1.2.1) Shifting emotions during home birth, 1.2.2) I (don't) want to be alone. We concluded that home births involve an intense and diverse range of satisfactions and tensions, the latter basically owing to the sociocultural resistance surrounding women. For this reason, they experienced home birth as an act of protest and highly valued the presence of midwives and their partners.
Highlights
Peer Review History: PLOS recognizes the benefits of transparency in the peer review process; we enable the publication of all of the content of peer review and author responses alongside final, published articles
Birth cultures are the set of traditions and rites handed down from generation to generation concerning a unique event in the lives of human beings: birth
Birth cultures evolve in response to their historical, political, economic and social contexts, which regulate and condition the community in which birth takes place [1]
Summary
Birth cultures are the set of traditions and rites handed down from generation to generation concerning a unique event in the lives of human beings: birth. When we speak about birth cultures, we refer to the act and moment of childbirth itself, and to maternity, the gestation process, the post-partum period, breastfeeding, child-raising, connections with birth attendants and interactions with institutions [2, 3]. From this perspective, birth cultures have become a valuable epistemological resource for study. Birth cultures have been transforming in recent years mainly affecting birth care and its socio-political contexts This situation has affected the feeling of well-being in women at the time of giving birth.
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