“It’s Like Rowing Upstream in the Dark”: Using Metaphors from Pandemic Pregnancy to Inform Messaging for Future Public Health Crises

Abstract

Being pregnant during a public health crisis can cause increased stress, which can have adverse health effects on the mother and baby. The communicated sense-making model proposes that individuals use narrative-like devices, such as metaphors, to make sense of stressful experiences. We conducted semi-structured interviews with cisgender women who were pregnant during the COVID-19 pandemic (n = 21) to uncover their metaphors about the experience. We identified three overarching types of metaphors (vulnerability, journey, strength), which depicted women’s perceived agency over the pandemic in relation to societal expectations of pregnancy. Based on these findings, we propose avenues for preparing for future public health crises, including using these metaphors to inform messaging for pregnant people.

Keywords:

• health communication
• metaphors
• pandemic
• pregnancy
• public health
• sense-making

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interests were reported by the authors.

Notes

[1] We recognize that people of varying gender identities can be pregnant. Because a vast majority of the research we review on pregnancy has been conducted with cisgender women and the current study’s sample is comprised of cisgender women, we primarily refer to pregnant people as “women.”

[2] Many participants experienced pregnancy during the initial shock of the COVID-19 crisis and social distancing requirements; others were pregnant when social distancing requirements were being lifted. All were pregnant before vaccine availability.