Women’s experiences about the process of parturition and postpartum in a school hospital

Abstract

This is a qualitative research that aimed to understand women's perception of the care offered in a Public School Hospital, as well as to apprehend the social representations about maternity that pervade this context, considering how breastfeeding has been experienced by women and incorporated into health care. Data collection occurred through semi-structured face-to-face interviews with eight hospitalized women. The choice for the semi-structured interview was made so that the research focus could be investigated and we did not run the risk of obtaining random and unrelated statements. Bardin Content Analysis was used, resulting in four categories of analysis elaborated by the researcher after analysis of the content of the speeches obtained: a) Representations about being a mother; b) Experiences of pre-partum, delivery and immediate post-partum work; c) The institutionalization of the body; d) Attendance offered to women and professional-patient relationship. As results, it was elucidated that the social representations about maternity were present in the experiences of the interviewed women, interfering in their maternity and in the perception of breastfeeding, as well as in health assistance. The institutionalization of the body and disciplinary births between care/prevention also aggravate women's regulation. Reports of reception practices, interdisciplinarity and integrality in the care were present, however the experience of limitations in the communicational processes, the organization of the health service, the relation of knowledge/power transformed in hierarquization in the patient-professional relation and the objectification of the woman in the childbirth process, denounced the necessity of important modifications in the way of caring and assisting women during this process, in order to make possible the protagonism of the women and hospital humanization. It was perceived the importance of this research as a form of accomplishment of a place of speech for the women-patients and their realities, fact that justifies its execution and publication, once the obtained data can contribute for the improvement of the cares offered by the multiprofessional team, that can also act aiming at the construction of a space of exchange between these patients and the professionals that attend them.