Labour lasts longer for women who are nervous about giving birth, found recent study by the University of Oslo. In nervous mothers, it can take extra ninety minutes to deliver their baby. Worried women usually take eight hours to give birth, while women who are not nervous take six and half hours to deliver a baby.
Scared of giving birth is known as tocophobia and it is believed that up to fifty of women suffered from it. Scared women liberate adrenalin which stops muscles in the womb from contracting properly and halting baby from pushing out. Women who are scared of giving birth are more prone to need a C-section birth.
A team led by Samantha Salvesen Adams, from the Health Services Research Centre, Akershus University Hospital, Norway, carried out a study that involved than twenty-two hundred women, who were thirty-two week pregnant. They were asked to take a psychological test that worked out their fear of childbirth.
They identified about seven-and-half percent of the women who are becoming mothers for the first time as scared of childbirth. The researchers found that found that these nervous women spent one hour and thirty-two minutes longer in labour and nervous women more likely to need an epidural or a caesarean.
Lead author Salvesen Adams, explained generally, longer labour duration increases the risk of emergency caesarean section. However, it is important to note that a large proportion of women with a fear of childbirth successfully had a vaginal delivery and so elective caesarean delivery should not be routinely recommended. The study was published in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology.