Pregnancy Healthcare for Lesbian Women

There have been several studies that discuss healthcare experiences of pregnant lesbian women. Larsson and Dykes conducted a study in 2009 about lesbian mothers in Sweden. The participants wanted their healthcare providers to confirm and recognize both parents, not just the biological mother. They also wanted their healthcare providers to ask questions about their "life styles" to demonstrate their openness about sexuality. Most of the women in the study commented that they had good experiences with healthcare. However, birth education tended to focus on mother and father dynamics. The forms that were also used tended to be heterosexist, only allowing for mother and father identities ^[1]. To account for these differences, Singer created a document about how to improve the prenatal care of lesbian women in the United States. She found that curiosity about a patient's sexuality can take over an appointment, sometimes placing the patient into a situation where they end up educating the provider. To be inclusive, Singer recommended that healthcare providers should be more inclusive in their opening discussions by saying "So tell me the story of how you became pregnant" (p.38). Healthcare providers should, according to Singer, use inclusive language that can be used for all types of patients. Healthcare providers were also not aware of how much reproductive health care cost for lesbian couples and they should openly recognize this issue with their lesbian patients ^[2]. Pharris, Bucchio, Dotson, and Davidson also provided suggestions on how to support lesbian couples during pregnancy. Childbirth educators should avoid assuming that parents are heterosexual or straight couples. They recommend using neutral language when discussing parent preferences. Forms, applications, and other distributed information should be inclusive of lesbian parents. They suggest using terms such as "non-biological mother, co-parent, social mother, other mother and second female parent" are good examples (p.23). Asking parents was also a suggested way to figure out what term should be used. Parents may also need help navigating legal systems in the area ^[3].

Midwives and doulas have provided care for lesbian women and couples who are pregnant. In an article in Rewire News, there was a discussion of how midwives and doulas are attempting to improve the overall care of lesbian couples by having specific training based on providing care to these couples as well as having inclusive processes6. In a study of lesbian and bisexual women in Canada about using healthcare services, researchers Ross, Steele, and Epstein found that the women in the study loved working with doulas and midwives. Midwives were considered helpful advocates with other healthcare providers that they encountered5. Midwives also discuss their perspectives. Röndahl, Bruhner, and Lindhe conducted a study in 2009 about lesbian pregnancy experiences of women in Norway. They found that midwives were the ones who were responsible for creating a space to discuss sexuality. However, midwives in the study felt that they were inadequate about having the communication tools to create this space. Additionally, the researchers found that lesbian couples were seen as different compared to straight couples. The partners have a sense of both love and friendship. Their differences were also seen when trying to find the roles for the lesbian co-mothers (non-biological mothers), as the language and questions asked did not fit their roles. Finally, the researchers found that there needed to be a balance of asking questions and being overly assertive. Midwives could ask questions about the patients' sexuality, but asking too many questions caused discomfort in the patients1

Lesbians and Pregnancy (Tentative Heading)

Röndahl, Bruhner, and Lindhe conducted a study in 2009 about lesbian pregnancy experiences of women in Norway. They had 11 midwives as their study participants. They found that midwives were the ones who were responsible for creating a space to discuss sexuality. However, midwives in the study felt that they were inadequate about having the communication tools to create this space. Additionally, the researchers found that lesbian couples were seen as different compared to straight couples. The partners has a sense of both love and friendship. Their differences were also seen when trying to find the roles for the lesbian co-mothers, as the language and questions asked did not fit their roles. Finally, the researchers found that there needed to be a balance of asking questions and being overly assertive. Midwives could ask questions about the patients' sexuality, but asking too many questions caused discomfort in the patients ^[4]. Larsson and Dykes conducted a study in 2009 as well about lesbian mothers in Sweden. They interviewed both the biological and non-biological mothers. The participants wanted their healthcare providers to confirm and recognize both parents, not just the biological mother. They also wanted their healthcare providers to ask questions about their "life styles" to demonstrate their openness about sexuality. Most of the women in the study commented that they had good experiences with healthcare. However, birth education tended to focus on mother and father dynamics. The forms that were also used tended to be heterosexist, only allowing for mother and father identities ^[1]. Singer created a document about how to improve the prenatal care of lesbian women in the United States. She found that curiosity about a patient's sexuality can take over an appointment, sometimes placing the patient into a situation where they end up educating the provider. To be inclusive, Singer recommended that healthcare providers should be more inclusive in their opening discussions by saying "So tell me the story of how you became pregnant" (p.38). Healthcare providers should, according to Singer, use inclusive language that can be used for all types of patients. Healthcare providers were also not aware of how much reproductive healthcare cost for lesbian couples and they should openly recognize this issue with their lesbian patients ^[2]

Pharris, Bucchio, Dotson, and Davidson provided suggestions on how to support lesbian couples during pregnancy. Childbirth educators should avoid assuming that parents are heterosexual or straight couples. They recommend using neutral language when discussing parent preferences. Forms, applications, and other distributed information should be inclusive of lesbian parents. They suggest using terms such as "non-biological mother, co-parent, social mother, other mother and second female parent" are good examples (p.23). Asking parents was also a suggested way to figure out what term should be used. Parents may also need help navigating legal systems in the area ^[3]. Ross, Steele, and Epstein conducted a study of lesbian and bisexual women in Canada about their experience using healthcare services. The women in the study said that they loved working with doulas and midwives. Midwives were considered helpful advocates with other healthcare providers. Negative experiences occurred when hospital staff did not know their relationship and did not account for same-sex family structures ^[5]. There are some doulas and midwives that are attempting to improve their care of lesbian couples by having specific training based on providing care to these couples as well as having inclusive processes ^[6].

Article Review: Queer Eye

The article was limited and didnt really have a full description of the show. I had never seen it before and was hoping for more information. There was a lack of refernces and 2 of the 4 were review websites. What was distracting was the netflix series page at the bottom of other original shows. It seemed to have more info than the actual subject.

Review of Potential Wiki Articles

I am currently trying to find where I can discuss lesbian experiences of pregnancy on wikipedia. As far as I can tell, there is no page dedicated to the topic, but there are potential articles that can be updated with the insertion of that topic. First, there is the page on LGBT parenting. In this article, they discuss how LGBT parents can become parents through adoption, surrogacy, etc. but they don't talk about the specific experiences of lesbian women. Most of the article focuses on the parenting debate of whether LGBT people can be good parents. For that reason, I am more hesitant to adding the section here. The talk page is all about discredited sources being added and therefore not relevant to what I'd like to add.

The other page I am considering adding to is Healthcare and the LGBT community. I briefly reviewed the page for the assignment of adding a sentence and when discussing the page with my adviser, we were both amused at the layout and how it perpetuates a lot of problematic perceptions of LGBT health, mainly that we are all diseased, deviant people. There is no discussion on lesbian pregnancy and some of the literature on the topic does discuss care of lesbian pregnant patients so there is logic to placing the topic there. On the talk page, they are discussing the absence of certain populations but they have already been added and a page was designated for transgender health. No one has discussed lesbian pregnancy so far. The argument could be made that it is not there because it is not "notable" but there are plenty of women in the US who identify as lesbians and are having children through birth and there are a decent number of sources on the topic.

What I found very interesting was that there was another page called Health equity that has a section on LGBT health. I found this page to be better than the previous one as it delved into more nuances that were missed. However, I do not think there would be a space for lesbian pregnancy, as in, there is no logical placement. I do think that there is a lot to write about for the paper considering all three pages.

Discussing What I Can Add

There is one overarching thing that I can add to the page. Currently, there is nothing on healthcare in terms of lesbian pregnancy. My plan is to focus on what was found specifically about receiving healthcare while being pregnant. The healthcare page does not address this specific aspect of LGBT healthcare. It is somewhat limiting in the sense that the articles are only on lesbian couples and not other LGBT pregnancy. This will be my main focus and I believe I can write two paragraphs based on the research and if needed, I will look for more news articles on the topic.

Bibliography

Beth Singer, R. (2012). Improving Prenatal Care for Pregnant Lesbians. International Journal of Childbirth Education, 27(4), 37–40.

Black, B. p. ( 1 ), & Fields, W. s. (2014). Contexts of reproductive loss in lesbian couples. MCN The American Journal of Maternal/Child Nursing, 39(3), 157–162. https://doi.org/10.1097/NMC.0000000000000032

Erlandsson, K., Linder, H., & Häggström-Nordin, E. (2010). Experiences of gay women during their partner’s pregnancy and childbirth. British Journal of Midwifery, 18(2), 99–103.

Larsson, A.-K., & Dykes, A.-K. (2009). Care during pregnancy and childbirth in Sweden: Perspectives of lesbian women. Midwifery, 25, 682–690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2007.10.004

Lee, E., Taylor, J., & Raitt, F. (2011). “It”s not me, it’s them’: How lesbian women make sense of negative experiences of maternity care: A hermeneutic study. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 67(5), 982–990. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2010.05548.x

Peel, E. (2010). Pregnancy loss in lesbian and bisexual women: An online survey of experiences. Human Reproduction, 25(3), 721–727. https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dep441

Pharris, A., Bucchio, J., Dotson, C., & Davidson, W. (2016). Supporting Lesbian Couples During Pregnancy. International Journal of Childbirth Education, 31(3), 23.

Priddle, H. (2015). How well are lesbians treated in UK fertility clinics? HUMAN FERTILITY, 18(3), 194–199.

Röndahl, G., Bruhner, E., & Lindhe, J. (2009). Heteronormative communication with lesbian families in antenatal care, childbirth and postnatal care. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 65(11), 2337–2344. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2009.05092.x

Ross, L. E., Steele, L. S., & Epstein, R. (2006). Service Use and Gaps in Services for Lesbian and Bisexual Women During Donor Insemination, Pregnancy, and the Postpartum Period. Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Canada, 28, 505–511. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1701-2163(16)32181-8

Ruppel, E. H., Karpman, H. E., Delk, C. E., & Merryman, M. (2017). Online maternity information seeking among lesbian, bisexual, and queer women. Midwifery, 48, 18–23. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2017.02.011

Spidsberg, B. D., & Sørlie, V. (2012). An expression of love—Midwives’ experiences in the encounter with lesbian women and their partners. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(4), 796–805. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05780.x

Tu, Y., Kojima, N., Iwamoto, I., & Miyazaki, F. (2017). The Disincentives of Pregnancy and Requests Toward Health Care Providers of Lesbian and Bisexual Females in Japan. JOURNAL OF SEXUAL MEDICINE, 14(5), E314–E315.

Wojnar, D. M., & Katzenmeyer, A. (2014). Research: Experiences of Preconception, Pregnancy, and New Motherhood for Lesbian Nonbiological Mothers. Journal of Obstetric, Gynecologic & Neonatal Nursing, 43, 50–60. https://doi.org/10.1111/1552-6909.12270

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