A discourse analysis on the construction of meaning by South African women who have experienced miscarriage or still-birth

Abstract

Pregnancy is constructed as being a joy-filled and natural experience with a taken for-granted expectation that the outcome will be a healthy baby. The reality is that roughly 1 in 4 pregnancies end in miscarriage and the stillbirth rate in South Africa is 24 per 100 births. Despite the overwhelming statistics related to pregnancy loss, it is still a topic that is shrouded in silence especially in relation to the psychological aspects of the experience. My primary aim of this study was to explore the manner in which women construct meaning around pregnancy loss by identifying and deconstructing the dominant discourses used by women to construct their experience. My secondary aim was to unravel the vast silences surrounding the experience. For the purpose of the study pregnancy loss was defined in terms of both miscarriage and stillbirth Women from all socio-economic backgrounds of consenting age who were English speaking and had experienced a pregnancy loss ( either miscarriage or stillbirth) were considered. Women were recruited using a combination of snowball sampling and posters placed in doctors rooms. Participants were interviewed using a semi-structured interview. The women in this study made use of several discourses to make sense of their pregnancy loss experience: Discourses of motherhood, Discourse of failure and religious discourse. The discourses of motherhood included: motherly instinct disregarded, responsibility towards foetus and need to protect from harm, claiming role as mother, the natural mother, the deviant mother. The discourses of failure included: failure as social mother, failure of body, failure of God and failure of medicine.