A comparison of maternal fear of childbirth, labor pain intensity and intrapartum analgesic consumption between primiparas and multiparas: A cross-sectional study.
Yongfang Deng, Yan Lin, Liyuan Yang and 5 others
PMID 34631987WHAT IT FOUND
First-time mothers reported more childbirth fear than experienced mothers, but used less epidural analgesia and fewer rescue doses per hour.
Fear did not predict how much pain relief women used; assess labor pain dynamically rather than by parity.
Key findings
01First-time mothers reported higher childbirth fear than mothers who had given birth before.
02Mothers who had given birth before and received epidural analgesia used more analgesic per hour and more successful rescue doses per hour than first-time mothers.
03Childbirth fear was not linked to the amount of epidural analgesic used.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
Convenience sampling at one hospital may not represent other settings. More experienced mothers than first-time mothers were included, which may create population bias. The pump recorded only successful manual boluses, so attempted but unsuccessful requests were not counted. Women were not asked about their knowledge or worries about epidural analgesia, so differences in use may reflect misunderstandings about risks to the baby. The childbirth fear questionnaire was validated in Chinese pregnant women, not thoroughly in laboring women worldwide. The study had low power for the fear comparison and the fear-pain relief association: no more than 32.7% power for average fear and 32.0% power for the pain-fear correlation. Because women were measured during labor in one cross-sectional snapshot, the study cannot show that fear caused pain relief use.
Declared interests
This study was funded by Guangzhou Municipal Science and Technology General Guide Project and the Nursing Research Fund of Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center. The authors declared no conflict of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that first-time mothers need more epidural analgesia because they have more childbirth fear. In this study, first-time mothers had higher fear scores but used less epidural analgesia per hour and fewer successful rescue doses per hour than experienced mothers.