Comparison of the Effect of Mother’s Education and Couple Education on Birth Method Decision-Making in Primiparous Mothers

Introduction: The choice of delivery method is influenced by numerous individual and environmental factors such as spouses, other family members and health care policy. Therefore, the present study was conducted to compare the effect of mother’s education with couple’s education on intention of choosing normal vaginal delivery in mothers attending to health centers in Babol.Methods: A quasi-experimental study was conducted on 161 primiparous mothers referred to prenatal centers in Babol city. The participants study was divided to two intervention groups; intervention groups 1, intervention group 2, and control group. Four sessions of the educational class were held for mothers in both intervention groups (mothers education group and mothers and fathers group). While, in intervention group 2, training classes were held for fathers at the first session as individual training and one month later as group training and then re-educated individually at the end of the sixth week. The mothers received only routine care in the control group. Immediately after intervention and one month later, decision making in selecting the type of delivery (12 decision questions) was completed by all three groups.Results: In the mothers and fathers group (intervention group 2), the intention to select normal vaginal delivery were increased from 45% at pre-training to 77% immediately after training and 84% at one month after training. While it was seen the increased slightly in mothers group (intervention groups 1). Also, in the control group, there is a slight increase in the rate of intention to select normal delivery in two stages.Conclusion: According to the findings of this study, it seems that the implementation of educational program for fathers can promote intention of selecting maternal delivery. It is recommended that educational programs be continued and periodically repeated with fathers’ education.