Engender blog

Tell us your experiences of pregnancy and maternity during Covid-19

We know that the COVID-19 pandemic, and the subsequent public health measures, had a disproportionate impact on women. Just one of the ways this is true was the impacts on women accessing fertility treatment, those who were pregnant or trying to conceive, and on people giving birth.

Engender and the Health and Social Care Alliance Scotland (the ALLIANCE) want to hear about your experiences of pregnancy or trying to become pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this survey is to gather information about experiences of maternity and pregnancy services in Scotland during COVID-19. This survey will be used to support our work on the COVID-19 independent inquiry and our work to improve women’s health and wellbeing.

While there was been widespread reporting of restrictions across hospitals and other healthcare settings, including sexual health clinics, GPs and midwife-led maternity units, official guidance throughout the pandemic was quick to change and varied across Scotland. We want to gather a detailed understanding of what restrictions operated at different times and in different health boards in order to assess services across different areas and clinical settings and to demonstrate how these directly impacted women during their pregnancies, labour and delivery. The information you provide us will be extremely important in ensuring that lessons are learnt so that women’s needs are prioritised in case of future crises.

The survey will take about half an hour to complete, and asks about your experiences during pregnancy and labour, as well as options to talk about issues including fertility support, abortion, miscarriage, stillbirth and neonatal death. The survey is set up in a way that means you only need to answer the questions which apply to your particular situation.

Take the survey here.

You can also access a shorter Easy Read version of the survey here.

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