Opinion of mothers on medical and spiritual aspects of pregnancy and labour - qualitative tests

Urszula Tataj -Puzyna, Barbara Baranowska, Grażyna Baczek, Krzysztof Czajkowski
2021
Pregnancy and labour have an important impact on woman's personal and social life. In the first half of the 20th century in Poland, pregnant women used to be called "blessed", "in the state of grace" or "at hope". Those terms put greater emphasis on the emotional aspect of pregnancy than on biology. A development of modern medicine and a progress in highly specialized techniques in medical diagnosis have entered into the physiology of woman's life - from family planning to pregnancy and labour.
more » ... The medical approach to motherhood has highlighted the biological and technical dimension, and marginalized the spiritual space of these experiences. Motherhood is not only a biological and medical process, but is also experienced in the social space and has a deep, psycho-spiritual dimension. When motherhood is seen and experienced only at the level of a biological event, when it has a lack of spiritual depth, it might become only an experience of technical management of a child. In addition to the biological and medical sphere, that dominated the area of pregnancy and labour, there is also an emotional and spiritual aspect, which, sometimes, is hard to define. In the light of Personalistic Anthropology, anything that concerns the biological dimension of the human is inextricably linked to its spiritual dimension and vice versa. Therefore, the appearance of a human in space-time is also the beginning of his spirituality, that is understood as the ability to go beyond the sphere of biological Leeds.
doi:10.34766/fetr.v32i4.613 fatcat:mlvvzvc5lzeqhcbwefmqmxxlrm