Childbirth matters: interpretative phenomenological analysis of British women's birthing experiences via emergency caesarean section, recounted on "YouTube".
The study examines YouTube video accounts of women's birthing experiences via emergency caesarean section using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Using an interpretivist theoretical perspective and a phenomenological methodology to gain an insight into their sense making during the birth of their child. A search on YouTube using the keywords "emergency c-section", "emergency caesarean section", "birth story emergency c-section" returned videos that matched the first criteria of the study; these were mainly women who had experienced a caesarean. However, the searches returned some elective procedures. A homogeneous sample was achieved by skimming through the videos and matching them with the inclusion criteria specified. Texts were transcribed and coded, then themes were identified across the texts. A screenshot from each text was taken to apply multimodal analysis when interpreting the experiences. Three master themes are discussed: "being medicalised", "experiences with medical staff", and "the experience of feelings"; along with their sub-themes, focussing on how women experienced each theme. The study is limited within its data collection method and analysis; however, it also offers strengths for future research. Future study should include discourse analysis around birth.