Women's expectations and experience of birth

Abstract

This was an exploratory study with three aims: (1) to examine the relationship during pregnancy between expectations of birth and symptoms of anxiety; (2) to examine the relationship between expectations and subsequent experience of birth; (3) to examine the effect of parity on expectations and experience. A prospective postal questionnaire study was carried out among 289 pregnant women who completed the measures of expectations of birth (e.g., expectations of obstetric events, emotions, control, support, pain etc.), trait and state anxiety during the 36th week of pregnancy. One week after birth, these women completed a questionnaire about their birth experience. The results found that anxiety in pregnancy was associated with expecting less positive emotion during birth, more negative emotion during birth, less control and less support during birth. Expectations were positively related to the birth experience. For example, women who expected high levels of control also experienced high levels of control during birth, although in general the correlation coefficients were low. Some aspects of women's experience were significantly different to their expectations, although these differences were no longer significant when trait anxiety was controlled for. Finally, some differences were observed between nulliparas and multiparas in both expectations and experience of birth, although primiparas were not always more ‘inaccurate’ in their expectations. These results are discussed here and suggestions for future research are made.

Keywords:

• Labour
• Birth
• Expectations
• Experience
• Anxiety
• Parity

Acknowledgements

We are indebted to the women who took part in this study. We would also like to thank two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and time.