The pregnancy experience: a mixed methods analysis of women's understanding of the antenatal journey.

Background: Positive contact with antenatal care and its providers improves positive outcomes for women and their babies. This involves the accrual and use of knowledge accumulated through education, experiential learning and other fora and is reliant on a positive experience.

Aims: Women's knowledge of antenatal and postnatal care was examined, in addition to the positive and negative feelings and experiences they associate with it.

Methods: Employing a mixed methodology, a self-administered questionnaire was distributed to women attending antenatal clinics. It consisted of open and closed questions examining women's experiences of antenatal care and knowledge of the intrapartum and postnatal journey. Following this, individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with eight postnatal women gaining further in-depth insight into their peripartum experiences.

Results: Respondents to the questionnaire had varied opinions and beliefs about the purpose of antenatal care and prenatal screening policies, with the majority of their knowledge obtained from non-medical sources. The knowledge of labour and its complications was significantly better in multiparous women. However, in some postnatal scenarios, both cohorts lacked knowledge. In the qualitative study, women described positive feelings with their experience of antenatal care, with women expressing variations in the amount of knowledge they wanted to receive.

Conclusions: This research demonstrates the varied experiences of women attending our services, highlighting both the positive and negative aspects of care. Topics of poor knowledge are highlighted, particularly in primiparous women and regarding the postnatal period. Using this information, women can be provided with an optimised, personalised experience in our maternity services.