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Internationally, politicians and practitioners have focused strongly on humanization of births, to enable fewer medicalized birth care procedures. In this paper, we explore policy efforts to support better births in order to comprehend developments in maternity care in Denmark and France, two countries previously identified as having different birth cultures. Our analysis has been fueled by the question of how birth policies have developed in both countries in an era in which medicalization of birth has been problematized internationally. Using discourse analysis, we examine the political constructions of specific problems in central policy documents. The analysis shows which problematizations around maternity care are discursively constructed, what solutions are discursively presented and on what assumptions the problematizations are based. The article supports the conclusion of other scholars that a pervading risk discourse on birth and birthing bodies constitutes how maternity care can be experienced and practiced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a synthesis of current knowledge about post-traumatic stress symptoms following childbirth. In particular it presents a two dimensional conceptual framework for understanding the development of symptoms based upon predisposing (pre-pregnancy/pregnancy), precipitating (perinatal) and maintaining (postnatal) factors, which relate to internal (within individual), external (environmental) and interactional factors. In addition key methodological issues and areas for further research are identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A difficult birth experience can have long lasting psychological effects on both mother and baby and this study details four in-depth accounts of first time mothers who described their birth experience as traumatizing. Narrative analysis was used to record discrepancies between the ideal and the real and produced narrative accounts that highlighted how these mothers felt invisible and dismissed in a medical culture of engineering obstetrics. Participants also detailed how their birth experience could be improved and this is set in context alongside current recommendations in maternal health care and the complexities of delivering such care in UK health settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]