Elsevier

The Lancet

Volume 359, Issue 9324, 22 June 2002, Pages 2128-2129
The Lancet

Commentary
Responding to fear of childbirth

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(02)09113-4Get rights and content

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  • Requests for cesarean deliveries: The politics of labor pain and pain relief in Shanghai, China

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    In particular, how women perceive and cope with pain depends on the environment and maternal self-efficacy—which are also important factors for women's overall satisfaction with birth (Flink et al., 2009; Callister et al., 2003; W. Cheung et al., 2007; Hodnett, 2002). Therefore, other means of improving childbirth should focus on providing childbirth education; promoting the inclusion of the family in the birth process; training birth attendants to provide compassionate support; encouraging women to express their pain as a normal part of birth; and, in the long-term, integrating a midwifery model for low-risk births within the current maternal-services system (Ip et al., 2009; Kao et al., 2004; Raven et al., 2015; Callister et al., 2003; Saisto et al., 2001; Bewley and Cockburn, 2002). By conceptualizing childbirth as a natural process, integrating social support, and attending to psychological and relational factors, the midwifery model of birth encourages vaginal birth and reduces requests of medically unnecessary cesarean births (LoCicero, 1993, 1268; R. E. Davis-Floyd et al., 1997).

  • Identifying women who are afraid of giving birth: A comparison of the fear of birth scale with the WDEQ-A in a large Australian cohort

    2015, Sexual and Reproductive Healthcare
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    Fear of childbirth is important to understand and respond to as it has been associated with caesarean section on maternal request [6, 7], post traumatic stress disorder [8], increased length of labour [9], negative birth experiences and low satisfaction with care [10]. Some level of apprehension in facing birth is considered normal and adaptive with a spectrum which places women from low levels of nervousness through to severe fear and tocophobia [11]. For multiparous women who perceive their previous birth as a negative experience, the fear of a subsequent birth is the most common explanation for their fear and makes intuitive sense to clinicians and researchers alike [3,12,13].

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