I found an article in the Journal of Advanced Nursing titled “‘Safe Passage’: Pregnant Iranian Kurdish Women’s Choice of Childbirth Method”. The article was written by Roonak Shahoei, Haliza Mohd Riji, and Zhila Abed Saeedi, who are professors of nursing, midwifery, and/or medical sciences. I was surprised yet very excited to find an article that related almost perfectly to my own research topic.

The research topic used for this study is labor choices, and the research question is  how women report emotions to impact their labor and delivery decisions. The data needed for this study was deeply held opinions and attitudes. This data was collected through interviews with Iranian Kurdish women who were a part of the study.

Participants for the study were chosen from three healthcare facilities at the Kurdistan University of Medical Sciences. The sample was of 22 women who mostly identified as housewives, and some working. The women in the sample were all in the third trimester of pregnancy, because the researchers found that the third trimester is the stage in which women begin to make decisions about how to deliver their baby. Through many interviews, the researchers found that Iranian Kurdish women do indeed base their childbirth decisions on their emotions, and specifically on the safety of their baby and themselves. The main emotions that women reported to influence their decisions were ensuring safety of their baby, fear, previous experience, emotional and social support, and religious beliefs (strong belief of Allah).

I found this study to be very interesting. I appreciate that there was a full section explaining ethical considerations when conducting the research, as well as a full disclosure of possible conflicts of interest and how the funding was provided for the study.  I think this article will help me with my research project later in the semester.