An Australian study of women's experiences of their first pregnancy.

Objective: to describe women's experiences and perceptions of their first pregnancy.

Design, Setting And Participants: a qualitative study, using grounded theory. Data were obtained from 13 women whose interviews were tape-recorded and transcribed.

Pregnant women's experiences of models of care in some hospitals in Victoria.

During the data analysis of a much larger study on 13 women's experiences of their first pregnancy, their interactions with the health system emerged as significant. Two grounded theory procedures, the making of comparisons and the asking of questions were used to analyse their experiences. Elements of three models of care were identified, medical/technocratic model, midwifery model, and a feminist perspective model.