Redefining “Healthy Mom, Healthy Baby”: Making Sense of Traumatic Birth Stories through Relational Dialectics Theory

Abstract

Framed by relational dialectics theory, the current investigation sought to understand women’s meaning making processes in publicly shared stories about birth trauma. Contrapuntal analysis was used to identify culturally dominant systems of meaning embedded in women’s talk about traumatic birth. Forty-one stories recounting traumatic births were analyzed within a variety of contexts (e.g., natural birth, cesarean, preemie). The dominant discourse of traumatic birth as incongruent with intensive motherhood informed much of women’s communication about traumatic birth. Discursive interplay was also identified through the struggle between the discourse of traumatic birth as incongruent with intensive motherhood and the discourse of individualism.