Findings of a National Survey on Birth in Ireland

This survey is part of a participatory health research project on birth in Ireland. The survey was conducted by a team of midwives, doulas, and mothers who are members of the Birth Rights Alliance Ireland (BRAI). One of the team members (Dr Susann Huschke) is also a health researcher at the School of Medicine, University of Limerick. The survey received ethics approval by the Education and Health Sciences ethics committee at the University of Limerick in November 2023 (approval number 2023_09_08_EHS).

We created this survey in order to find out more about women and birthing people’s experiences of birth in Ireland. In Ireland, the vast majority of births take place in the medicalised settings of maternity hospitals where birth interventions such as inductions and C-sections are very common. The aim of the research is to find out more about the reasons for these rates of birth interventions: why is this happening, what information are birthing people given to make decisions about their birth and labour, and how do birthing people feel about their experiences of giving birth in Ireland?

In this report, we provide an overall summary of the key survey findings, followed by more specific results from each sub-section of the survey. The appendix includes the entire list of questions asked in the survey and summary tables of the responses for each of the questions.

We invited anyone who gave birth in Ireland between 2018 and 2023 to fill out the survey. The survey was run online on Qualtrics. A total of 3,824 people started the survey, although not all completed the entire survey. On average, respondents completed 77% of the survey. 2,522 respondents (66%) completed the entire survey. Some survey questions only applied to a subset of the respondents, e.g. questions relating to vaginal birth after a C-section (VBAC) and breech presentation, which led to fewer responses in these sections. In the appendix, we report the number of responses for each question separately.

The survey included 20 open-ended questions where respondents could write free text responses. The number of responses to these questions ranged from less than 10 in the more specific questions to hundreds of responses in the more general questions. The exact number of responses for each open-ended question can be found in the appendix. Some responses contained a few words whereas others included detailed descriptions of experiences.

We have included a selection of responses to some of these questions in this report. Responses were selected to represent the diversity of experiences and views for each question.

Access to the anonymised data sets, which include all responses for the open-ended questions, may be granted by the research team to interested members of the public and to other researchers for the purpose of secondary data analysis. To ask for access to free text responses/qualitative data sets, please email Dr Susann Huschke: susann.huschke@ul.ie