Prenatal Attachment Levels of Women Getting Pregnant Naturally or through In Vitro Fertilization
Project no. 909 · Status: Kapanmış · 2016
Summary
Attachment is defined as a strong emotional bond that people develop for people they consider important to them. The concept of attachment has been investigated to include all stages of life, from the prenatal period to death. The purpose of this study is to determine the prenatal attachment levels of women getting pregnant naturally and through in vitro fertilization (IVF). Method:The study was conducted in the IVF unit and Pregnancy Policlinic of a Training and Research Hospital. The pregnant women who presented to the pregnancy polyclinic comprised the naturally pregnant women group and the women who presented to the IVF unit and became pregnant after being treated comprised the IVF group. The study data were collected with three tools: first form the socio- demographic characteristics; the second tool was used to collect data about obstetric and IVF processes of; the third tool was the Prenatal Attachment Inventory used to measure prenatal attachment. In this study, the Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficient of the Prenatal Attachment Inventory was 0.89. The participants were interviewed three times. At the first interview, the pregnant women were told about the purpose and process of the study, and then their written informed consent was obtained and the data on their socio-demographic characteristics were collected. The participants were contacted at the 26th week of their pregnancy for the second time through face-to-face interviews or telephone. They were administered the Prenatal Attachment Scale. The participants were contacted at the 34th-36th weeks of their pregnancy for the last time through face-to- face interviews or telephone calls. At this interview, the Prenatal Attachment Scale and the form used to collect data about the obstetric and IVF treatment processes. Analysis; It was carried out using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. The student's t-test, chi-square test and Mann-Whitney U test were used to determine number-percentage, standard deviation and frequencies. Ethical:The study, permissions were obtained from the Ethics Committee of the Northern General Secretariat of the Gzmir Public Hospitals Association and the hospital where the study was to be conducted. To use the Prenatal Attachment Scale,the permission was obtained from the author. In addition, written consent was obtained from the pregnant women who agreed to participate in the study. Results: The mean age of pregnant women who became pregnant IVF was 30.56±3.89 respectively. There was no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of the mean scores the participants obtained from the Prenatal Attachment Scale in the two measurements (p>0.05). The Prenatal Attachment Scores of the women who became pregnant naturally were higher than those of the women who became pregnant through IVF. However, while the mean scores the women who became pregnant naturally obtained from the Prenatal Attachment Scale at the first measurement were not statistically significantly different from those they obtained in the second measurement (p>0.05), the difference in the women who became pregnant through IVF was statistically significant (p<0.05). In conclusion, there was no difference between the women who became pregnant naturally and through IVF in terms of their prenatal attachment levels, the attachment level increased in the women who became pregnant through IVF as their gestational week increased.