The Effects of Listening to Lullabies and Self-selected Music at Home on Prenatal Stress and Anxiety in Nulliparous Pregnant Women: A Randomized-controlled Study

Especially, nulliparous women who have experienced their first pregnancy may lose their control while making the first transition to motherhood and incorporating motherhood roles into other areas of their lives due to inexperience, and may be more vulnerable to stress and anxiety. It has been reported that these pregnant women have higher anxiety than those who have given birth. Antenatal anxiety and stress negatively affect maternal and fetal health. Health care professionals can benefit from music interventions to evaluate the anxiety and stress levels of pregnant women, especially in the last trimester, and to improve their physical, emotional and mental health. In some studies, music interventions made at home for pregnant women reduced anxiety and stress, thus providing psychological benefits during pregnancy, childbirth and postpartum period. The aim of this study is to compare the effects of listening to lullabies and the music of their choice at home on reducing the anxiety and stress experienced by nulliparous pregnant women.

This research is a randomized controlled experimental study in parallel group pretest-posttest design. The research was carried out in the obstetrics and gynecology outpatient clinics of a university hospital in eastern Turkey.

The population of the study consisted of healthy pregnant women who applied to the obstetrics clinic of the hospital where the study was conducted for pregnancy follow-up. G ∗ Power 3.1.9 software was used to calculate the sample size of the study. In the power analysis based on state and trait anxiety inventory scores, at least 35 pregnant women were included in each group with 95% confidence interval (1-α), 95.5% test power (1-β), 0.05 error and d=0.887 effect size. needed was determined. The pregnant women (n=16) included in the study were randomly assigned to the lullaby group (NG) (n=40), mixed music group (MG) (n=40) or control group (CG) (n=40) by simple randomization method. The statistician randomized the participants to intervention groups or control groups with the computer program "Quickcalcs graph pad" (http://www.graphpad.com/quickcalcs/, Accessed: 28.07.2021). Participants were grouped according to the randomization list according to the order of admission to the obstetrics clinic.

Necessary information about the study was given to the pregnant women who were suitable and willing to participate in the study. These pregnant women were randomly assigned to one of three groups after taking their written consent. There were two experimental and one control group in the study. One of the experimental group was a lullaby group and the other was a mixed music group. The control group did not listen to music, did not receive any intervention, received routine general care only during hospital visits.

First of all, sociodemographic and obstetric data of the pregnant women were collected, and their anxiety and stress levels were evaluated at the beginning of the study (pretest) and after 2 weeks of music intervention/general care (posttest). These data were collected at the hospital when pregnant women came to their pregnancy follow-ups.