Table 2.

Women’s attributions of the traumatic birth experience in descending order of frequency and stratified by parity. Participants could choose multiple answers; there was no maximum number of answers

Answer given	n	%	Primiparous	Multiparous	p value
Lack and/or loss of control	1196	54.6%	961 (55.3%)	226 (51.2%)	0.13
Fear for baby’s health/life	1093	49.9%	846 (48.7%)	235 (53.3%)	0.09
High intensity of pain/physical discomfort	1039	47.4%	850 (48.9%)	184 (41.7%)	0.01 *
Communication/explanation	957	43.7%	773 (44.5%)	178 (40.4%)	0.12
Long duration of delivery	830	37.9%	746 (42.9%)	78 (17.7%)	0.00 *
Lack of emotional and/or practical support from caregivers	781	35.6%	620 (35.7%)	154 (34.9%)	0.76
A certain action/intervention was done	758	34.6%	608 (35.0%)	145 (32.9%)	0.40
Discrepancy of expectations	751	34.3%	617 (35.5%)	133 (30.2%)	0.03 *
(Lack of) autonomy/involvement in decision-making process	664	30.3%	513 (29.5%)	146 (33.1%)	0.15
Fear for own health/life	633	28.9%	476 (27.4%)	155 (35.1%)	0.00 *
Respect/taken seriously/way they were treated	487	22.2%	375 (21.6%)	106 (24.0%)	0.27
Bad outcome (impactful maternal/infant complications)	444	20.3%	334 (19.2%)	108 (24.5%)	0.01 *
A certain intervention was not done, while the woman would have wanted it to be	382	17.4%	293 (16.9%)	87 (19.7%)	0.16
Lack of emotional support from partner	178	8.1%	134 (7.7%)	42 (9.5%)	0.21
Other
Separated from baby after delivery	36	1.6%	32 (1.8%)	4 (0.9%)	0.17
Delivery went too fast	34	1.6%	21 (1.2%)	13 (2.9%)	0.01 *
Have not experienced the delivery consciously (due to general anesthesia or other medication)	25	1.1%	22 (1.3%)	3 (0.7%)	0.30
Other reasons	93	4.2%	34 (4.9%)	7 (3.9%)	0.57

^*Significant at p ≤ 0.05