The Professional Counselor | Volume 14, Issue 3 260 formulation, recruitment, and data collection. Weekly reflexive journal entries were discussed among the research team. These group-based reflexive discussions focused on making sense of and, when necessary, bracketing the influence of prejudgments, biases, and preconceptions in relation to the study such as our personal and professional commitments to advocating for the presence of familial support, family-oriented community structures, and greater accessibility to postpartum services. As the research process transitioned to the data analysis phase, we reserved our reflexive responses and primary interpretations of the data for discussion in face-to-face meetings. Containing the data analysis process to the group milieu supported our use of analyst triangulation, providing that no one member of the data analysis team engaged in the analysis and interpretation of the data alone. Findings Four themes were found using Moustakas’s (1994) transcendental phenomenology methodology: powerlessness, help-seeking, recovering power, and here and now. Below, we present these themes, building on the theme of powerlessness and culminating with the participants’ empowering experience of being heard in the present moment during the focus groups. While this data is presented in a progressive sequence that seemingly indicates a transition from powerlessness to empowerment, we would like to note that we are not proposing a developmental model. Each theme is described and elaborated upon below using the participants’ words. Powerlessness The first theme pertains to the feelings of powerlessness experienced by participants from rural communities regarding childbirth and postpartum recovery (i.e., physical and emotional). Participants expressed feelings of powerlessness within childbirth by sharing ways this feeling impacted their delivery and how the experience of being inadequate, out of control, or powerless extended into their role as mothers and sometimes into their postpartum recovery. In talking about childbirth, the participants recounted intense experiences where they felt that they did not have a choice or a voice when birthing their child or have autonomy over their body. One participant stated, “I could have pushed. But the doctor was busy, and I was like, this is ridiculous.” Others collectively described the limitations of epidurals: “My back looked like I had been shot with a BB gun because they kept trying to poke. And I’m like, can you please get somebody that’s going to get it right the first time at this point?” Another participant noted the disregard for knowledge of her own body: But the epidural didn’t work for me either. I had a hot spot, so they kept trying to put it back in and there was one spot that it wasn’t working on, which I knew would happen because of my back problems. Other participants shared their lack of voice when deciding to have a vaginal delivery or an epidural, stating: The doctor was like, well, we’ll schedule C-section for tomorrow. I was like, oh no we will not! What’s my options here? So, I had a C-section with her at 38 weeks. When she came out, I got to see her for a minute, but they told me all kinds of things were wrong with her. And then she went to the NICU.
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