Effect of antenatal class attendance on fear of childbirth and antenatal stress

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: To assess the effect of attending antenatal classes on fear of childbirth and antenatal stress in nulliparous pregnant women. METHODS: A total of 133 nulliparous pregnant women participated in the study, which had a quasi-experimental design. Data were collected by a descriptive data form, the Wijma Delivery Expectancy/Experience Questionnaire, and the Antenatal Perceived Stress Inventory (APSI). RESULTS: A significant correlation was found between antenatal class attendance and having a high schooling level and an intended pregnancy (p < 0.05). The mean fear of childbirth score of pregnant women was 85.50 ± 19.41 before the training and 76.32 ± 20.52 after the training, and the difference between these scores was significant (p < 0.01). Fear of childbirth score were not significantly different between the intervention group and the control group. The mean APSI score of pregnant women in the intervention group was 22.32 ± 6.12 before the training and 21.79 ± 5.97 after the training. However, this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.70). CONCLUSION: The fear of childbirth score decreased significantly in the intervention group after the training © This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original author and source are credited