Controlled Breathing With or Without Lavender Aromatherapy for Labor Pain at the First Stage: A Randomized Clinical Trial

There is a wide range of interventions available for managing labor pain. Complementary medicine and nonpharmacological approaches to relieve pain are the components of midwifery practice that can simply be started by midwives. This study aimed to examine the effect of breathing technique with lavender on labor pain compared to breathing technique alone
in an Iranian setting in 2015.
A single-blind randomized trial was conducted on the pregnant women hospitalized in labor room in Fatemieh maternity hospital. A total of 120 laboring mothers who were eligible for the study were randomly assigned to two groups of breathing technique with lavender and breathing technique with sterile water. The labor pain was measured using the visual analogue scale at different dilatations. Data analysis was done by t test and χ2 using SPSS version 18.0.
The mean age of women in the group of breathing technique with lavender and of breathing technique with sterile water were 25.5±4.3 and 26±4.9, respectively (P=0.6). The mean total pain scores in the experimental and control groups were 6.77±1.89 and 7.44±1.66 (CI: -1.35, 0.014), respectively (P=0.05).
The results of the study indicated that breathing technique with lavender reduced labor pain at the end of labor (i.e.at the cervical dilatation of 9-10 cm) compared to breathing technique without lavender. Further research is needed to confrm the effect of lavender aromatherapy on labor pain.