The effect of sacral massage applied in labor on birth pain anxiety level and birth process

The aim of this study was to determine the effect of sacral massage on anxiety level, birth pain and birth process of women. The study was conducted between March and May 2017 in a randomized controlled experimental type. The population of the study consisted of all pregnant women accepted to give birth in Balcalı Hospital of Çukurova University Faculty of Medicine and the sample consisted of 75 pregnant women. Ethics committee approval, hospital consent and informed consent were obtained from the participants. The data of the study were collected by informed consent form, assessment form related to the birth process, assessment form regarding the outcome of the birth, pain assessment scale, continuous and state anxiety scale. Data were analyzed in IBM SPSS Statistics 22 program. Critical significance value was taken as p <0.05. It was determined that 46.7% of women were high school graduates, 96.0% were not working, 61.3% had moderate income, and 64.0% had pregnancies planned. Experimental and control groups were related to socio-demographic and pregnancy properties are similar (p> 0.05). It was found that 96.0% of the women were afraid of giving birth and 47.9% of them were most afraid of birth pain. In our study, no significant difference was found between sacral massage with sage oil and sacral massage groups in terms of anxiety level and birth pain. However, there was a significant difference between the control group and both experimental groups (p<0.05). The mean score of difficulty of birth of the control group was statistically higher than the experimental groups (p = 0.001). There was no difference between the experimental and control groups in terms of delivery process. Women in the experimental group had higher birth satisfaction. The results of this study show that the sacral massage applied during labor is effective in reducing the birth pain and anxiety levels of pregnant women, increases the satisfaction rate but does not change the delivery process and the use of sage oil and vaseline during sacral massage does not change these results.