Women’s perceptions and self-reports of excessive bleeding during and after delivery: findings from a mixed-methods study in Northern Nigeria

OBJECTIVES: To explore lay perceptions of bleeding during and after delivery, and measure the frequency of self-reported indicators of bleeding. SETTING: Yola, North-East Nigeria. PARTICIPANTS: Women aged 15–49 years who delivered in the preceding 2 years of data collection period (2015–2016), and their family members who played key roles. METHODS: Data on perceptions of bleeding were collected through 7 focus group discussions, 21 in-depth interviews and 10 family interviews. Sampling was purposive and data were analysed thematically. A household survey was then conducted with 640 women using cluster sampling on postpartum bleeding indicators developed from the qualitative data; data were analysed descriptively. RESULTS: Perceptions of excessive bleeding fell under four themes: quantity of blood lost; rate/duration of blood flow; symptoms related to blood loss and receiving birth interventions/hearing comments from birth attendants. Young and less educated rural women had difficulty quantifying blood loss objectively, including when shown quantities using bottles. Respondents felt that acceptable blood loss levels depended on the individual woman and whether the blood is ‘good’ or ‘diseased/bad.’ Respondents believed that ‘diseased’ blood was a normal result of delivery and universally took steps to help it ‘come out.’ In the quantitative survey, indicators representing less blood loss were reported more frequently than those representing greater loss, for example, more women reported staining their clothes (33.6%) than the bed (18.1%) and the floor (6.2%). Overall, indicators related to quantity and rate of blood flow had higher frequencies compared with symptom and intervention-related/comment-related indicators. CONCLUSION: Women quantify bleeding during and after delivery in varied ways and some women do not see bleeding as problematic. This suggests the need for standard messaging to address subjectivity. The range of indicators and varied frequencies highlight the challenges of measuring excessive bleeding from self-reports. More work is needed in improving and testing validity of questions.