CONSORT flow diagram of the study.
Tele-midwifery
A randomized allocation into two groups of intervention and control with a 1: 1 ratio took place during the routine prenatal visit in the hospital. A colleague who was not involved in the study put each computerized generated random sequences separately in sealed and opaque envelopes. To mask the person performing the allocation, the letters A and B were used to assign women to the intervention or control group. In both intervention and control groups, the Tele-midwifery application was installed on their smartphones during their prenatal visit, and instructions for using the application were explained. This application only allowed access to the questionnaires in the post-test, and follow-up stages for participants in the control group. However, the intervention group had access to all features of the application. The researcher could track the women’s activities in the application, and in case the women had not use the application for more than two days, a reminder was sent to follow them up. To prevent information contamination in the control group, after installing the application and before activating their account, women selected their group type as A or B. In addition, we asked the women in both groups to avoid sharing the contents of the application with each other for the duration of the trial. The Tele-midwifery application had two main stages for answering the questions. After filling out the baseline questionnaire in the initial registration, including demographic, W-DEQ, and CBSE questionnaires, each groups of participants completed the W-DEQ and CBSE questionnaires again at 34–36 weeks (after eight weeks of receiving the intervention). Participants were also asked to inform the researcher by sending a message after hospitalization for their birth, whether in the Tele-midwifery application or by contacting the researcher directly by her phone number. Afterward, the W-DEQ version B questionnaire appeared in the application within the first two hours after birth, and the birth mode was recorded. Due to the nature of the intervention, it was not possible to mask participants from the group allocation. However, investigators, care providers, data collectors, and statisticians were masked from the allocation.