Worries of primiparous women about birth and the effecting factors

Objective of this study was to evaluate the worries of primiparous women about birth and the effecting factors. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 150 primiparous pregnant women monitored in Maternity Clinic of Tepecik Education and Research Hospital, Ministry of Health University of Health Sciences, İzmir. Worry status determined via Oxford Worries on Labour Scale (OWLS) was the dependent variable whereas socio-demographic characteristics, health and pregnancy history were the independent variables. Data was collected via face to face interviews using pre-structured data collection forms by the researcher. SPSS vers. 15.0 was used for data analysis and independent samples t-test was used. p<0.05 was deemed significant. All of the participants were monitored by a gynecologist. Older age (≥35 years of age; p=0.025), higher education (University or higher; p=0.003), working (p=0.033) decreased worry level significantly. None of the variables in the pregnancy or health history were found to be significant, obtaining knowledge about birth from a health care personnel decreased worry significantly (p=0.002). Moreover, it was found that the ones who obtained knowledge about birth were in later stages of their pregnancies (p<0.001), higher educated (p=0.002) and working (p<0.001). As a conclusion, older age, higher education, working and obtaining knowledge about birth decreased the level of worry significantly.