Background A cross-national comparison of Belgian and Dutch childbearing women allows us to gain insight into the relative importance of pain acceptance and personal control in pain relief in 2 maternity care models. Although Belgium and the Netherlands are neighbouring countries sharing the same language, political system and geography, they are characterised by a different organisation of hea...

BACKGROUND Labor pain is one of the most intense pains experienced by women. Different factors including physiological, psychological, socio-cultural, environmental, and personality-related factors are relevant to perception of childbirth pain. The negative experience of pain causes mental, psychological problems and influences the relationship between the mother and infant. Therefore, consider...

abstract background: labor is a physiologic process, and consideration of labor pain and relieving that is among the major components of maternal care. application of some labor position can lay the fetus better in pelvic canal direction. the present study aimed to investigate the effect of laying the mother in three labor positions on the pain severity in the second, third, and fourth stages o...

OBJECTIVES To evaluate efficacy of ibuprofen compared with acetaminophen for relief of perineal pain after childbirth, side effects of ibuprofen compared with acetaminophen and patient satisfaction in treatment between the 2 groups. MATERIAL AND METHOD A total of 210 women who gave birth by spontaneous vaginal delivery with mediolateral episiotomy between June 2006 and November 2006 were rand...

Fear of childbirth has gained importance in the context of increasing medicalization of childbirth. Belgian and Dutch societies are very similar but differ with regard to the organization of maternity care. The Dutch have a high percentage of home births and low medical intervention rates. In contrast, home births in Belgium are rarer, and the medical model is more widely used. By comparing the...

BACKGROUND How women experience childbirth is acknowledged as critical to the postnatal wellbeing of mother and baby. However there is a knowledge deficit in identifying the important elements of these experiences in order to enhance care. This study elicits women's preferences for the most important elements of their childbirth experiences. METHODS A mixed methods design was used. An initial...

The pain of childbirth is arguably the most severe pain most women will endure in their lifetimes. The pain of the early first stage of labor arises from dilation of the lower uterine segment and cervix. Pain from the late first stage and second stage of labor arises from descent of the fetus in the birth canal, resulting in distension and tearing of tissues in the vagina and perineum. An array...

In 1953, Virginia Apgar published the article "A Proposal for a New Method for Evaluation of the Newborn Infant" about her method for scoring newborn infants directly after birth to assess their health and whether medical intervention was necessary. Apgar worked at the Presbyterian Hospital in New York City, New York, as an obstetrical anesthesiologist, a physician who administers pain medicati...