Labor, Delivery, and Anesthesia Experiences of Women with Physical Disability

Background: Although many women with physical disabilities report poor quality reproductive health care, little research has addressed labor, delivery, and anesthesia experiences of these women. This study was conducted to explore these experiences in women with significant mobility disabilities.

Methods: A qualitative descriptive study was conducted with 22 women from the United States who had delivered newborns within the prior 10 years. All had significant mobility disabilities. Two-hour, in-depth telephone interviews were conducted using a semistructured, open-ended interview protocol, which addressed many topics, including labor, delivery, and anesthesia experiences. We recruited most participants through social networks, interviewing women from 17 states. Conventional content analysis, facilitated by NVivo software, was used to identify major themes.

Results: The mean age of women was 34.8 ± 5.3 years. Most women were white, college educated, and used wheeled mobility aids. Four key themes emerged from participants' narratives of laboring and giving birth with a disability. These included women's preferences for type of delivery, clinicians and some women expected no labor pain, fears prompting active advocacy, and positive experiences. As participants discussed their experiences with anesthesia, four additional themes were identified: importance of consultation with the anesthesia team, decisions about epidural/spinal vs general anesthesia, failed epidural with repeated efforts, and fear of injury related to anesthesia.

Conclusions: The responses of women in this study suggest that there is need to make intrapartum care better for women with physical disabilities and to improve their experiences with labor, birth, and obstetric anesthesia care.