Abstract
Measuring an individual's experience of healthcare is complex, let alone when the experience concerns pregnancy, birth and postnatal care. Giving birth is a major life event, likely to be viewed in retrospect by women as a time of fluctuating physical and psychological health and well‐being, altered body image, and positive and negative views of support offered by those they come into contact with. Given the ebbs and flows of the pregnancy, birth and postnatal journey, providing ‘hard data’ to inform an objective measure of experience which also reflects the context, environment and quality of care, is not an easy task. Nevertheless, with increasing recognition of the importance of patient experience as a driving force for service improvement and resource allocation, knowing what contributes to a more (or less) positive experience is important. How, when and what to measure are important questions.