Sharing special birth stories. An explorative study of online childbirth narratives

Increasingly, pregnant women, as active online media users, incorporate media driven values on childbirth that may not agree with professional midwifery values. In Dutch midwifery practice, online searching for other women's stories is often discouraged. However, online birth stories attract women as a means to learn from one another's experiences of childbirth.

This study aims to explore Dutch women's use of an online social media platform (Instagram) to represent childbirth by analyzing their narrative strategies.

A collection of 110 Instagram-linked childbirth narratives (2015-2017) were analyzed applying an approach of interpretative repertoires.

The Dutch women in this study linked birth stories on their Instagram accounts that represented impactful experiences of childbirth. In their narratives, three interconnected repertoires are played out: sharing your story, going into details, and doing it yourself. This study highlights that narrative details of the online birth stories illustrate the physical and procedural obstacles that women overcame in giving birth.

Reporting their emotional experiences in detail, women's online sharing of birth stories puts a focus on their personal preferences and decision making, and may ease the way for medical interventions. Without giving explicit advice, personal online birth stories could be instrumental in reformulating the standards of what childbirth is, or should be, like.

Social media networks allow women to exchange stories that structure narrating women's childbirth experiences and offer a structure for the lived or future experiences of others. This may have an impact on women's decision-making during pregnancy and childbirth.