Women who were mentored while pregnant and encouraged to plan for the birth were found to be almost half as likely to have a Caesarean section as the rest of the population, unpublished figures reveal.
The findings, outlined in a conference at Dublin’s Rotunda Hospital yesterday, were from a study into the impact of early childhood intervention in disadvantaged households.
Dr Orla Doyle, research fellow at the UCD Geary Institute, is the principal investigator on a five-year school-readiness programme, Preparing for Life. The project is following the progress of 200 mothers and their children in Dublin’s north inner city, from pregnancy until the children start school.
Presenting the findings at a conference on collaborative research across lifespans, hosted by the North Dublin Hospital Group, Dr Doyle said most of the mothers had been recruited in the Rotunda and most were from socially deprived backgrounds.
“We found that those mothers who had high levels of support from pregnancy had C-section rates of about 15 per cent, while the other group had levels of 25 per cent,” she said.
