Midwives' experience of caring for mothers who relinquish their babies for adoption

Abstract

Objective

The present study aimed to clarify the experiences of midwives caring for mothers considering relinquishing their baby for adoption and to obtain suggestions for improving the quality of midwifery care for these birth mothers.

Subjects and Methods

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine midwives working at medical facilities that have experience with providing care for pregnant women considering relinquishing their baby for adoption. Responses regarding the kind of care provided to birth mothers and midwives' thoughts and feelings during care provision were qualitatively and descriptively analyzed from the perspective of understanding midwives' experiences during care provision for birth mothers.

Results

Working in coordination with support groups and ward staff, midwives experienced providing care for birth mothers as part of a unified team. They accepted the birth mothers, who presented at the hospital under complicated circumstances, and experienced making a committed effort to provide unbiased midwifery care while also supporting birth mothers toward an emotionally and physically healthy pregnancy and delivery. Furthermore, they experienced sensing the growing maternal feelings and protecting birth mothers' right to provide a support for watching and touching a baby. Also, they experienced swirling ethical conflicts during the process of supporting birth mothers choosing adoption, while calmly watching over the extremes of the decision-making process and feeling the pain of the birth mothers choosing adoption.

At the same time, in order to uphold their responsibility as a healthcare provider, they experienced attempting to avoid involving emotions and conflict in their care. While feelings of dissatisfaction remained after the end of care provision, the midwives had also embarked on the process of recognizing care provision as a skill and deriving new perspectives and awareness of issues in midwifery care through involvement in these cases, such as learning how to respond to birth mothers.

Conclusion

The present findings indicate the importance of midwives recognizing that conflict and a need for emotional regulation may arise during care for birth mothers and of creating opportunities for sharing their feelings with their team.