Effect of Movements and Positions of Labouing Women on Maternal Satisfaction During First Stage of Labour

Controversial opinions on movements and positions during labour still exits. In today's scenario immobility as become common occurrence during labour due to risk focused management made obstetricians and midwife become inconvenient, discouraged and restricted with the use of movements and positions. Additionally lack of resources and accurate information to these issues depicts that need for an hour to be discussed and analysed to find evidenced based practice intervention and to maintain sense of normality and make birth "as nature intended". To evaluate the effect of movements position changes on maternal satisfaction and explore the relationship between maternal satisfaction with demographic variables, pain and obstetric variables. A quantitative experimental study was conducted among 211 primi parturient mothers who were in active stage of labour with uncomplicated pregnancy were allocated to experimental group (n=106) and control group (n=105). Movements and position changes like walking, rocking, swaying were provided to experimental and not to control group. Both the groups were received hospital routine care. Pain was assessed by using VAS scale, 24 hours after the delivery the maternal satisfaction with movements and positioning was assessed by three point rating scale which has reliability of 0.82. There was a significant difference found between experimental and control group on maternal satisfaction at p=0.01 level. Mean score also was high in experimental group depicted statistical significance. There was a significant association found in maternal age, education, support system, source of information and body mass index. The study concluded that adoption of various movements and positions during first stage of labour enhanced maternal satisfaction on child birth. Considering available evidence and result of this study recommends that various positions and movements during labour is an effective intervention that can be practiced in birth centres and community setup by midwives.