Abstract

Labor pain relief is one of the challenges in health care systems in the most countries and is the main goal in midwifery cares.

Introduction: This study aimed to investigate the chamomile breath on this pain intensity in the first stage of labor on prim parous women in Abhar Emdadi hospital in 2013.

Methods and Results: This study was a randomized clinical trial carried out on 130 eligible prim parous women (65 in intervention and 65 in control group) at Emdadi Hospital of Abhar. The pain severity was measured at the moment of enrolling in the study. In the aroma therapy group gauze was soaked in 2 drops of Matrica camomilla water and in the control group gauze were soaked in 2 drops of distilled water and attached to the woman collars. The intervention was repeated every half an hour. Pain severity was measured in first and after intervention in 3-4, 5-7, and 8-10 centimeter dilatations. The samples were followed up until delivery. The materials used in this study were the demographic and obstetrics questionnaire, observation and exam checklist and the numeral scale of pain measurement. Independent T-test, the Mann-Whitney and Chi-squared test was implemented to analyze the data using SPSS v22 while the significance level was (0.05).

The two groups were homogenized regarding age, profession, education, wanted pregnancy and number and severity of uterus contraction. The bishop score was calculated as well. Before intervention, the mean pain severity score after the intervention in intervention group in 3-4 cm (5.75±1.99), 5-7cm (7±1.52) and 8-10cm (7.01±1.22) decreased significantly compared with control group in dilatation 3-4 cm (8.93±1.96), 5-7 cm (9.41±0.63) and 8-10 cm (9.8±0.40) (p<0.005).

Conclusions: The findings of the study revealed that aromatherapy of M. chamomilla water alleviates the labor pain. Therefore this method is recommended due to reducing the labor pain.