For women who arrived in the maternity ward after
commencement of the active phase of labour (46.5%), we
used maternal recall of the start time of regular contractions
to define the start of labour. For these women the
estimated labour duration was longer than in women who
could be followed from start of the active phase at the
maternity ward (6.67 hours versus 6.04 hours). There was,
however, no association between late arrival to the maternity
ward and fear of childbirth. Hence, inaccurate determination
of labour duration for women with late arrival to
the maternity ward is not likely to have biased our main
findings.