[Do previous abortions cause fear of childbirth?].

BACKGROUND

Abortion is a matter that concerns many women, and we have little knowledge about the effects of such experiences with regard to later pregnancies. The objective of the study was to investigate whether a previous history of abortion has an effect on later development of fear of childbirth, adjusted for the woman's mental health, parity, previous stillbirths and socio-demographic factors.

MATERIAL AND METHODS

The study included 2,753 pregnant women from Akershus University Hospital. Information was collected with the aid of questionnaires in the 18th and 32nd week of gestation, as well as retrievals from the hospital's system of birth records. Fear of childbirth was measured on the Wijma scale (W-DEQ).

RESULTS

The prevalence of fear of childbirth (defined as W-DEQ ≥ 85) amounted to 11.7% among women who had undertaken two or more elective abortions and 7.8% among those who had no previous abortions. This trend was not statistically significant and disappeared completely in the adjusted analyses. Nor did we find any correlation between spontaneous abortions and fear of childbirth. The mental health of the woman was the one factor that was most strongly associated with fear of childbirth, an association that we have found also on a previous occasion in analyses of a smaller proportion of this cohort.

INTERPRETATION

We found no co-variance between previous abortion history and fear of childbirth.