Title: Mothers’ experiences living with diastasis recti abdominis – an interview study
Version: 1 Date: 10 Aug 2023
Reviewer's report:
I have reviewed the manuscript entitled "Mothers’ experiences living with diastasis recti
abdominis – an interview study”. It is an interesting study, with concrete examples of how
mothers experience living with DRA.
Introduction:
• The introduction is well-written and easy to read. A minor comment is that reference nr. 8 is
from 2019 and thereby more recent than some of the articles referred to in the following sentence:
“However, more recent studies have not found such correlations (4, 5, 10, 11)” (line 53).
Methods
• Design and participants:
o You write that “among inclusion criteria was a clinically significant DRA with an IRD of 28
mm or more”. Was it not a criterion that the condition was affecting the women’s functionality or
in other ways bothered them? (Especially since an important topic discussed during interviews
was how the condition affects different aspects of day-to-day life).
o I miss a few more sentences regarding how information power was assessed according to the
five dimensions (1) study aim, (2) sample specificity, (3) use of established theory, (4) quality
of dialogue, and (5) analysis strategy.
• Analysis
o The subgroups are established in the third step, not the second as currently described.
Results
• Overall, the results are clearly presented, with a few exceptions that should be clarified or
revised:
o I do not see that the paragraph about fear of contributing to their children developing a negative
body-image fits in result section where it is currently presented (line 222-226).
o As presented now, the sentence “mothers also felt pride in having a functioning and relatively
healthy body (..)” seem contradictory to the long result section right before about all the health
issues and physical limitations described by the mothers. I do understand that there can be
different nuances and perspectives, and that it might also vary for the mothers how much the
condition affects them physically, but this should be made clearer in the presentation.
o It is somewhat confusing that all the pseudonyms starts with M.
Discussion
• The discussion is okay with many good reflections but could be more to the point. It is
a bit repetitive presenting the same titles as in the results, with too many repetitions of the
results. Several theoretical concepts are presented (the conceptual model of health literacy,
empowerment, resilience) which is fine within a longer master’s thesis but since none of them
are mentioned in the introduction, and an inductive analysis is used, it may seem a bit random.
I suggest you present the theoretical framework in the introduction, and then discuss how the
results can be understood considering the theory.
• Line 272: The sentence “However, there is reason to believe that it took a long time to receive
a diagnosis (24)” seem a bit odd since you are basing this assumption on previous research. Isn’t
this something the participants talked about or mentioned during the interviews?
Methodological reflections
• The sample size is low, and you should include this as a limitation with more reflections about
sample size and information power.
• You should include some reflections about what it might mean for the results that 3 out of 6
recruited themselves to the study.
Conclusion
• I find this section too general and narrow. The conclusion should be more specific according
to the results in this paper, and with more implications for practice and further research. Some
of the implications presented throughout the discussion section could be moved here.
There are some grammatical and phrasing issues in the manuscript that need editing.