The Effect Between Foam Mattress and Torus Blanket to Relieve Perineal Pain in Postpartum Women

Perineal pain after episiotomy is a major problem following vaginal birth delivery. Acute postpartum perineal pain may result from perineal trauma due to bruising, spontaneous tears, surgical incisions (episiotomies), or in association with operative births (vacuum or forceps assisted births). The hospital women patient clothing was not fit for postpartum mothers during breastfeeding. It might course pain in these women when they sit and had activities on bed. Pain is often increased when postpartum women have activities such as eating or breastfeeding. To reduce pain and increase comfort, the researchers design the foam mattress for postpartum women.

Purpose: The purposes of this quasi-experimental study were to compare perineal pain severity and maternal satisfaction after using the foam mattress and the torus blanket in postpartum women at postpartum ward, Ramathibodi Hospital. There were 31 purposively selected postpartum women in postpartum ward during January - March 2015. Measuring tools consisted of numerical pain scores and maternal satisfaction questionnaires of using the foam mattress and the torus blanket between postpartum women. The content validity was examined by three experts. The content validity index was 0.8. The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of maternal satisfaction questionnaires was 0.82.

Methods: The postpartum mothers was assigned to using the foam mattress and change between the blanket torus within 15 minutes by simple random sampling, the researcher assess pain scores before and after using both of them. The participants were asked to answer the satisfaction questionnaires. Data were analyzed by mean, standard deviation, independent t-test and paired t-test.

Results: The results showed that pain severity after using the foam mattress and the torus blanket were 2.17 (SD= 1.86) and 2.33 (SD= 1.81) respectively. It also revealed that pain severity before and after using the foam mattress and the torus blanket had a significantly higher mean of pain severity (p < .001). However, there was not significant different between pain severity of both the foam mattress and the torus blanket. The different mean before and after of pain score both of them had not different significantly. Result also showed that maternal satisfaction of the foam mattress and the torus blanket were 57.67 (SD= 7.90) and 52.23 (SD= 8.46) respectively. In addition, using the foam mattress had a significantly mean of comfortable scores (p < .01), design scores, and maternal satisfaction scores (p < .05) of using torus blanket. The benefit scores had not different significantly.

Conclusion: Perineal pain is often increased when postpartum women have activities. This study suggested that using of the foam mattress can relief perineal pain and increase comfort to use in postpartum women.