Women's Lived Experience of Emotional Bonding with Their Husbands and Successful Vaginal Delivery: A Phenomenological Study

Abstract

Childbirth is one of the most important events in women's lives and a bridge for them to enter the maternal stage and accept a new role in the family. Due to the need to promote natural childbirth in the country, in this study, women's lived experience of the emotional link between wife and husband and successful natural delivery studied using the phenomenological methodology and in-depth interviews. Twelve participants were selected from among Tehran's first-born women by purposeful sampling. In this study, according to qualitative and phenomenological research, the sample size was determined based on the theoretical saturation criterion to achieve the research goal and lake of new information's appearance. The collected data analyzed by the Colaizzi method. This study's central theme is the spouse's emotional role in vaginal delivery, which is extracted from three sub-themes of the spouse's positive emotional attitude about natural childbirth, spouse's emotional participation during birth, and spouse's emotional protection after delivery. It seems that the emotional connection between husband and wife in this during can create a more pleasant experience of birth in women and increase women's desire for a natural birth. Indeed, Childbirth is a process that begins with the choice of the type of delivery, and it continues until the full recovery of women after childbirth. The emotional interaction of spouses plays an essential role in the passage of this stage and women's lived experience.