Table 4. Focus group themes–selected exemplar quotations.

Themes	Exemplar Quotations
Impact of Disease     • Lossof Employment     • Loss of Education     • Lifestyle Limitations     • Abandonment by Partner/Spouse     • Financial Burden of Disease     • Dependence on Others	“There was a time I had an introduction ceremony but my man refused to appear because his mother had told him, ‘You cannot marry that woman who cannot give birth.’” “The other thing they say is, ‘Will you handle that one? She is so costly and if you don’t have money you won’t handle her. It’s because she is costly; her delivery will require money and everything about her requires money.’”
Stigma (In relationship to HIV)	“I was in high school in the boarding section but I would take tablets every day and people would see me taking them. So they would say that it is HIV and that I was just hiding it from them.” “Can’t there be any other medicine they can get you for that time? For instance when one gets HIV, they get you something such that you are able to give birth to a healthy baby.”
Personal Desire for Pregnancy	“I separated with this guy, [but] my kid gives me hope. Sometimes I can be on bed feeling pain and then my kid comes and asks me ‘mummy, are you sick?’ Then I feel like a person cares.” “We should not be judged because we are also human beings. Much as we have this in our body, we have desires, we want children and we want families.”
Reproduction as a Balanced Risk by Patients	“If birth control can prevent me from getting pregnant, I will take it, because I know that I am not supposed to get pregnant when I am on warfarin because it is dangerous.” “[The doctor] told me that if I got pregnant yet I have a heart disease, either myself or the baby, one has to die during delivery”
Control of Fertility by External Actors	“My husband was okay before I got pregnant but when I delivered the second baby, he said, ‘now you will deliver even the third one.’ So I think he thinks they were just lies in the beginning now that I had delivered the second baby. So now he is like, ‘now you will have the third one and we end at that’ which is not easy since it is a risk you have to take.”
Black and White/ Absolute Recommendations from Healthcare Providers	“Whenever I ask my doctor about the right time I will get pregnant he just tells me, “you hold on I will tell you when the right time comes.” “Then he [the doctor] was like, 'Oh my God! You should not have any other baby.' So I wondered, 'Will this man [her husband] stay with me? Is he going to leave me?’”
Misconceptions about Medications	“I was using IUD but… it causes a risk of endocarditis. I couldn’t go for hormonal because of the risk of coagulation.” “Since my blood pressure had risen, they told me that if I added contraceptives it would further increase.” “They always tell me that the tablets that I swallow every day will cause me fibroids.”