The relationship between expectation, experience and perception of labour pain: an observational study

The present study was aimed to assess the relationship between pain expectation before labour, labour pain and pain perception after the labour. Pregnant women were asked to rate their pain level on a standard continuous visual analogue scale at various time points. Pain expectancy (PE), labour pain (LP) and postpartum pain perception (PPP) scores were calculated. The final study group was composed of 230 pregnant women after exclusions. Mean age of pregnant women was 26.2 +/- 5.79. The mean PE, LP, and PPP scores were 70.11 +/- 18.82, 75.72 +/- 19.2 and 65.84 +/- 19.56, respectively. The difference among pain scores was statistically significant (p < 0.001). There was a positive correlation between PE and LP or PE and PPP scores (p = 0.27 and p = 0.21). The correlations were statistically significant (p = 0.01 or p = 0.01). In addition, there was a positive correlation between LP and PPP scores (p = 0.87) and the correlation was statistically significant (p = 0.01). This study showed that, if pregnant women had lower expectations of pain before the labour, they indeed experienced lower amount of pain during the labour.