Sampling and random assignment
pain
This trial was conducted on primiparous women at 32–34 weeks of gestation referred to the specialized perinatology clinic of Al-Zahra and Taleghani hospitals in Tabriz. The sampling was done after obtaining permission from the Ethics Committee of the Deputy of Research and Technology of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences (IR.TBZMED.REC.1400.1121) and Tabriz Faculty of Medical Sciences and registering on the Iranian Registry of Clinical Trials (IRCT) site (IRCT code: 20171007036615N9). The researcher (the first author, who was a senior student of midwifery counseling and had the certificate of mindfulness-based counselling course) attended the specialized perinatology clinic of the afore-mentioned hospitals and examined the inclusion criteria. The eligible women were requested to attend a face-to-face session in one of the clinic’s rooms and the objectives and method of the study were fully explained. Then, the written informed consent form was obtained from the women willing to participate in the study and socio-demographic and obstetric characteristics questionnaire was completed. In our hospital, epidural analgesia services are not provided for Spontaneous Vaginal Delivery, due to the inadequacy of skilled and expert personnel in this field. Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods are offered to the mother according to the doctor’s prescription, and childbirth care is mainly doctor-oriented and it is not common to use pharmacological and non-pharmacological pain relief methods.The participants were assigned into the intervention (mindfulness-based counselling) and control groups with a ratio of 1:1 by blocked randomization using Random Allocation Software (RAS) with a block size of 4 and 6. Blocking was done by a non-involved person in sampling and data analysis. The type of allocation was written on a piece of paper and put in opaque envelopes numbered consecutively for allocation concealment. The envelopes were opened in the presence of the mother by a non-involved person in the sampling process (clinic manager of hospital).