Abstract:
Background: Childbirth fearis becoming increasingly recognized as a clinical issue that can
have profound effects on the mother and her experience of pregnancy and birth. Failure to
identify women with Childbirth fear could potentially lead mothers to feel isolated and
unsupported, and impact on their psychological health and the health of their baby.
Objective: To assess the magnitude of childbirth fear and associated factors among pregnant
women at West Wollega Public Hospitals, West Wollega, Ethiopia, 2020.
Methods: A facility based cross-sectional study was conducted among 298 pregnant women
selected by systematic random sampling from April 20 to May 20, 2020. A structured intervieweradministered questionnaire was used to collect data. The collected data was cleaned, coded, and
entered to Epi data 3.1 and exported to SPSS version 25 for analyses. Descriptive analysis was
done to calculate mean scores and standard deviation. Bivariate and multivariable logistic
regression with 95% confidence interval was carried out.
Result: From the total of 304 women interviewed, 298were completed the interview making a
response rate of 98.03%. The overall magnitude of childbirth fear was 28.9% with 95%
confidence interval.Majority of the respondents 162 (54.4%) fall in the 25-29 years age group.
Mean age of the respondents was 27.60 (SD± 4.56) years with a minimum and maximum age of
18 and 43 respectively.Having previous pregnancy complication [AOR (95% CI)], [6.949 (2.060
– 23.445),presence of long time during childbirth [AOR (95% CI)], [4.765 (1.161 – 19.564)],
presence of episiotomy [AOR (95% CI)], [4.197 (1.107 – 15.917)], low social support [AOR
(95% CI)], [.011 (.003 – .050)]were significantly associated with Childbirth fear.
Conclusions and recommendation: Magnitude of Childbirth fear is common in the study area.
Having previous pregnancy complication, low social support, episiotomy, labour pain, labour
too long were associated with Childbirth fear. Identifying and developing interventions for
women with these associated characteristics is of clinical importance for the reduction of
childbirth fear during pregnancy in the study area.
