The spiritual experience of high-risk pregnancy.

OBJECTIVE: To uncover the spiritual beliefs and practices of women experiencing high-risk pregnancies. DESIGN: Qualitative, naturalistic inquiry via face-to-face, semistructured interviews, with thematic analysis of interview transcripts. SETTING: A prenatal special care unit of a tertiary health centre. PARTICIPANTS: A purposeful sample of 12 women admitted for high-risk pregnancy complications. RESULTS: Analysis of the women's interviews uncovered the following themes: high-risk pregnancy as a challenge, seeking a spiritual language, what makes you who you are, and everything will be OK. CONCLUSIONS: Findings from this study highlight that within the challenges of a high-risk pregnancy, the women often struggled to define their spirituality yet recognized spiritual expression as key to their health and healing. Each woman identified aspects of their spirituality that enabled them and their families to deal with the stress of their high-risk pregnancy experience, which they believed enhanced outcomes for themselves and their unborn child.

Spirituality and high-risk pregnancy: another aspect of patient care.

A high-risk pregnancy can be a stressful situation for a woman, her partner and her family. Many women utilize their spiritual beliefs as a way to make sense of their situation. Health care professionals, including nurses, midwives and physicians, can provide effective spiritual care and support consistent with their professional scopes of practice. Spiritually focused interventions can help to reduce stress and anxiety and create a more open and confident approach to the management of pregnancy complications.