The effect of haptonomy and virtual reality on anxiety, prenatal attachment and acceptance of pregnancy in the unplanned pregnant women: Imagining the baby

Aim:This study was aimed to determine the effect of haptonomy and virtual reality application on anxiety,attachment and acceptance of pregnancy in unplanned pregnancies. Material and Methods:The sample of this randomized controlled study consisted of 217 pregnant women (haptonomy:73, virtual reality:72 and control:72) who applied to the Elazig Fethi Sekin City Hospital Gynecology Polyclinics between June 2020 and April 2021.24-32 gestation age with 7-10 day intervals for both experimental groups. Four interviews were conducted with pregnant women at the gestational week.The haptonomy group were asked to imagine their babies by touching their bellies with the philosophy of haptonomy.In the virtual reality group, ultrasound images of the pregnant woman's own baby were taken,and thanks to the developed software system, the pregnant woman was allowed to see and imagine her baby through virtual reality glasses.No intervention was applied to the control group.The data were collected with the Pregnancy Identification Form, LMUP, PAI, PRAQ-R2,and PSEQ-Conception of Pregnancy Sub-Dimension.It was analyzed by descriptive statistics, pearson chi-square test, one-way anova test and LSD post-hoc analysis were used in the analysis of the data. Results:It was determined that the pregnancy-related anxiety level was lower and the acceptance level of pregnancy was higher the haptonomy and virtual reality groups than the control group(p=0.000).It was determined that the post-test prenatal attachment level was lower in the control group than the haptonomy and virtual reality groups(p=0.000).Especially, it was found that the prenatal attachment level in the haptonomy group was higher than the virtual reality group(p=0.000). Conclusion:Unplanned pregnancies, imagining the baby with haptonomy and virtual reality are techniques that reduce pregnancy-related anxiety and increase the acceptance level of pregnancy with attachment. Especially haptonomy showed a higher effect on prenatal attachment.