The relationality of maternity care: A diffractive analysis of maternity care experiences

Problem: Pervasive polemics of differing approaches to and values of maternity care limit possibilities of nuanced and productive understandings of how maternity care is experienced.

Aim: To explore how maternity care identities (midwife, obstetrician, childbearing woman) are shaped by binarised conceptualisations of childbirth.

Methods: The diffractive analysis of data gathered in collective biography research groups.

Findings and discussion: Maternity care identities are not complete, pre-established entities, but rather are, 'in the making', remade in every maternity care encounter.

Conclusion: Maternity care identities are defined by their encounters with other maternity care identities, and therefore, each maternity care identity plays a role in which experiences of maternity care come into being.