the relationship between postnatal attachment and fear of childbirth

Background & aim: the aim of this study was to investigate the relationshipbetween mother-infant attachment and fear of childbirth in the postpartum period.methods: the data of this cross-sectional study were collected from 142 puerperalwomen who attended kağızman şahindere family health center no. 1 and 2,kars/turkey and had a normal spontaneous birth between 2017 and 2019. thequestionnaire developed by the researcher, wijma birth expectation/experiencescale version b and mother-infant attachment scale were used to collect data.kolmogorov-smirnov test for normal distribution eligibility tests, shapiro-wilktest, independent samples t test after eligibility, one-way anova tukey test,kruskal wallis h test, pearson correlation, and bonferroni post-hoc test independent and independent variables were used to analyze data.results: while the total average score of puerperal women from the wijma birthexpectation/experience scale was 86.83+28.23, the total average score theyreceived from the mother-infant attachment scale was 9.40+2.21. there was amoderately positive significant relationship between the scores puerperal womenreceived from the wijma birth expectation/experience scale and the motherinfantattachment scale (p<0.05). it was found that the higher the score on thewijma birth expectation/experience scale, the higher the score on the mother-infant attachment scale.conclusion: it was found that as the fear of childbirth increased, the mother-infantattachment decreased. so it could be suggested that the pregnant womenshould be directed to the childbirth preparation classes to preventnegative effects on the postnatal attachment level of women due to theirfear of childbirth.