Symptom Experience in Late Pregnancy.

Objective: To evaluate the frequency, severity, distress, and correlates of common and rare symptoms reported by nulliparous women during the last month of pregnancy.

Design: Secondary cross-sectional analysis of data obtained in a larger randomized clinical trial.

Setting: San Francisco Bay area.

Sleep disruption and duration in late pregnancy is associated with excess gestational weight gain among overweight and obese women.

Background: Poor sleep during pregnancy has been associated with poorer birth outcomes. High body mass index (BMI) is often associated with poor sleep, but little is known about the relationship between gestational weight gain and sleep in late pregnancy. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationships of both gestational weight gain and pre-pregnancy BMI to objective and subjective measures of sleep during late pregnancy.

Hypnotherapy for labor and birth.

Hypnotherapy is an integrative mind-body technique with therapeutic potential in various health care applications, including labor and birth. Evaluating the efficacy of this modality in controlled studies can be difficult, because of methodologic challenges, such as obtaining adequate sample sizes and standardizing experimental conditions. Women using hypnosis techniques for childbirth in hospital settings may face barriers related to caregiver resistance or institutional policies.

The effects of childbirth self-efficacy and anxiety during pregnancy on prehospitalization labor.

Objective: To describe levels of anxiety and self-efficacy for childbirth in nulliparous women during the late third trimester and to identify relationships among those variables, prehospitalization labor pain, management strategies, and hospital admission status.

Design: A longitudinal, descriptive study.

Participants: Thirty-five English-speaking nulliparous women, 18 to 40 years of age, more than or equal to 38 week's gestation, with uncomplicated pregnancies.

Sleep disturbance in late pregnancy and early labor.

Unlabelled: Sleep disturbance is a typical complaint during pregnancy, particularly in the third trimester. Previous studies of this phenomenon have not measured sleep in the last days of pregnancy as women transition into labor. Poor sleep can have potentially adverse effects on labor and delivery.

Expectations, perceptions, and management of labor in nulliparas prior to hospitalization.

This ethnographic qualitative study was designed to explore the phenomenon of prehospitalization labor from the perspective of nulliparous women. Twenty-three women were interviewed in the early postpartum period using a semistructured interview guide. The participants recounted their experiences with labor onset recognition and management before being admitted to the hospital for birthing.