• Matern Child Health J · Jun 2021

    Pandemic Birthing: Childbirth Satisfaction, Perceived Health Care Bias, and Postpartum Health During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

    • Teresa Janevic, Sheela Maru, Sarah Nowlin, Katharine McCarthy, Veerle Bergink, Joanne Stone, Jennifer Dias, Stephanie Wu, and Elizabeth A Howell.
    • Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductive Science, Icahn School of Medicine At Mount Sinai, New York, USA. Teresa.Janevic@mountsinai.org.
    • Matern Child Health J. 2021 Jun 1; 25 (6): 860-869.

    ObjectiveTo examine the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on birth satisfaction and perceived health care discrimination during childbirth, and in turn, the influence of these birth experiences on postpartum health.Study DesignWe conducted a cross-sectional, bilingual web survey of 237 women who gave birth at two hospitals in New York City and assessed patient-reported experience and outcomes following the first wave of SARS-CoV-2 infections in the New York region. We ascertained SARS-CoV-2 status at delivery from the electronic medical record using participant-reported name and date of birth. We compared birth experience during the COVID-19 pandemic (March 15, 2020-May 11, 2020) to a pre-pandemic response period (January 1, 2020-March 14, 2020). We estimated risk ratios for associations between birth experience and anxiety, depressive symptoms, stress, birth-related PTSD, emergency department visits, timely postpartum visit, and exclusive breastfeeding. Multivariable models adjusted for age, race-ethnicity, insurance, education, parity, BMI, previous experience of maltreatment/abuse and cesarean delivery.ResultsWomen who gave birth during the peak of the pandemic response, and those that were SARS-CoV-2 positive, Black, and Latina, had lower birth satisfaction and higher perceived health care discrimination. Women with lower birth satisfaction were more likely to report higher postpartum anxiety, stress, depressive symptoms, and lower exclusive breastfeeding. Experiencing one or more incident of health care discrimination was associated with higher levels of postpartum stress and birth-related PTSD.ConclusionHospitals and policy-makers should institute measures to safeguard against a negative birth experience during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, particularly among birthing people of color.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…