It starts even before morning sickness: You get pregnant, and suddenly you’re deluged with cringe-worthy tales of 80-hour labors, 4th-degree tears, botched epidurals and other things you’d really rather not know about. Every movie you watch seems to have a gory screaming-cursing delivery room scene.
For some women, fear of giving birth becomes so pronounced that it’s actually a phobia. Tocophobia is fear of childbirth, and it stops some women from getting pregnant, even though they really want children.
If you’re pregnant or considering it in the future, don’t panic! The truth is, while childbirth is certainly no walk in the park, most go perfectly fine. Whether you birth at a hospital or at home, with a midwife or doctors, giving birth can be empowering, beautiful, inspiring, crazy, peaceful, even funny – there’s a whole spectrum of experiences that we don’t necessarily hear much about.
What if we could change the conversation about childbirth? What if we started sharing our birth stories – the awesome ones, and the awe-inspiring, and not just the awful?
Were you afraid of childbirth? Vote, and please share your personal birth story in the comments.