Investigation of the effect of pregnant women’s childbirth-related Internet use on fear of childbirth

Abstract

This research was carried out to examine the effect of childbirth-related Internet use by pregnant women on fear of childbirth (FOC). The descriptive study was conducted with 350 pregnant women who applied to the Outpatient Polyclinic of Gynaecology and Obstetrics. Of the pregnant women who used the Internet, 72.9% did so to research information about childbirth. The pregnant women used the Internet mostly to obtain information about coping with labour pain (43.4%), the delivery process (46.9%), the needs list at delivery (39.4%), about C-section/epidural analgesia for labour (26.8%), and about the environment of the delivery room (25.7%). It was determined that there was a statistically significant difference (p < .05) between the delivery-related video viewing status of the pregnant women, the mean score of the W-DEQ Version A (p < .05), and the FOC was lower in those who watched videos about delivery.

IMPACT STATEMENT

• What is already known on this subject? Previous studies have shown that pregnant women frequently use the Internet as a source of information about childbirth.

• What do the results of this study add? The findings of this study reveal that watching videos and listening to or reading the narrations significantly affected the FOC.

• What are the implications of these findings for clinical practice or further research? Nurses who provide preconception and antenatal care should consider Internet use as a risk factor for FOC and should guide pregnant women to reliable sources.

Keywords:

• Birth
• labour
• fear of childbirth
• use of the Internet
• pregnancy

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank the participants for contributing to the study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.