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Cardiovascular medicine
Original research
Exploring the lived experiences of pregnancy and early motherhood in Italian women with congenital heart disease: an interpretative phenomenological analysis
  1. Serena Francesca Flocco1,
  2. Rosario Caruso1,
  3. Serena Barello2,
  4. Tiziana Nania1,
  5. Silvio Simeone3,
  6. Federica Dellafiore1
  1. 1Health Professions Research and Development Unit, IRCCS Policlinico San Danato, San Donato Milanese, Lombardia, Italy
  2. 2Department of Psychology, EngageMinds HUB – Consumer & Health Research Center, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy
  3. 3Department of Biomedicine and Prevention, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Roma, Lazio, Italy
  1. Correspondence to Dr Rosario Caruso; rosario.caruso{at}unimi.it

Abstract

Objective This study explored the lived experiences of women with congenital heart disease (CHD) during pregnancy and early motherhood.

Design Qualitative study using semistructured interviews. Data were analysed according to interpretative phenomenological analysis.

Setting San Donato Milanese, Italy.

Participants 12 adult women during pregnancy or early motherhood.

Results Three main themes emerged from the analysis that were labelled as follows: ‘Being a woman with CHD’; ‘Being a mother with CHD’; and ‘Don’t be alone’. Mothers described both positive and negative feelings about their pregnancies and transitions from childless women to mothers with CHD. They needed supportive care to improve the management of their health during pregnancy and early motherhood.

Conclusion This study explored the lived experiences of women with CHD during pregnancy and early motherhood. The emerged themes represent an initial framework for implementing theory-grounded educational and supportive strategies that improve self-care, engagement and quality of life for women with CHD. Furthermore, the study’s results provide guidance for operationalising the described experiences into items and domains for future cross-national surveys.

  • congenital heart disease
  • qualitative research
  • cardiology
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

This is an open access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited, appropriate credit is given, any changes made indicated, and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/.

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2019-034588

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    Footnotes

    • Contributors All authors: conception and design. FD, SFF, TN and RC were particularly involved in the acquisition of data, SB and SS in analysis and interpretation of data; all authors have substantially contributed in drafting the manuscript and in providing critical revision of important intellectual content. Each author gave their final approval of the version to be published. Each author should have participated sufficiently in the work to take public responsibility for appropriate portions of the content.

    • Funding This research was partially supported by ‘Ricerca Corrente’ funding from Italian Ministry of Health to IRCCS Policlinico San Donato.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Patient consent for publication Obtained.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.

    • Data availability statement Data are available upon reasonable request. We intend to make data (interviews) freely available upon request to the corresponding author (rosario.caruso@unimi.it).