Maternal Care

          It includes prenatal care, which involves medical checkups, testing, and health guidance; care during childbirth, often involving skilled birth attendants and emergency obstetric care when needed; and postpartum care, which supports the mother's recovery. The overarching goal is to prevent maternal and infant morbidity and mortality, promote well-being, and address disparities through access to quality care and resources.

           In this study the term maternity care is understood as care for women and partners, family and children in pregnancy, during childbirth and postnatally. Organisation of health professionals working in this field of healthcare is also in our scope, focusing primarily on doctors, midwives and nurses. Our focus is on the health promotive part of the field, stressing that meaningfulness and thus spirituality is not merely related to sickness or death, but to be understood as promoting mental health in its deepest sense

           Women and their babies require access to high quality care, although the reality of global maternity care provision lies in or between the two extremes of care that are ‘too little, too late (TLTL)’ ‘too much, or too soon’(TMTS) (Miller et al., 2016). TLTL refers to under-resourced and often sub-standard care which may be available too late to be helpful, while TMTS relates to the over medicalization of maternity care.