Mobility is an adjuvant approach for intrapartum care - A clinical randomized interventional study

In this highly technological medical scenario immobility during intrapartum period has become common issue associated with child birth. Though the benefits of movements and position changes to facilitate labour process have been discussed in literature for decades, controversial opinions, on movements and positions during labour still exits. Additionally lack of resources and accurate information to these issues depicts that need for an hour to be discussed and analyzed to find evidenced based practice intervention and to maintain sense of normality and make birth "as nature intended". To evaluate the effectiveness of mobility during labour on birth outcome among primi parturient mothers. Additionally this study also tested the maternal satisfaction a with child birth. 240 low risk primi parturient mothers who were in active stage of labour with uncomplicated pregnancy recruited and were allocated by Simple random sampling technique into the two arms of the study, but only 106 in study and 105 in control group participants completed the trial. Movements like walking, rocking, swaying were provided to experimental and not to control group. Both the groups were received hospital routine care. In active stage of labour (3-6 cm of cervical dilatation) the women completed the demographic and obstetrical information and pain was measured by 0-10 numerical rating scale and labour process and outcome are assessed by using partograph. Maternal satisfaction was assessed by rating scale. This study revealed that pain and other labour process parameters are significant at p=0.05 level between study and control group. Mothers in study group had less number of fetal distress and caesarian section, shorter duration of first stage, less need for augmentation and pain medication and higher satisfaction than control group at p=0.001 level of significance.