1. June 2026
Fear of Birth: Why So Many Women Feel Scared (And What Actually Helps)
Why do I feel so scared of birth?
If you have ever felt some anxiety, fear or apprehension about birth you aren’t alone. It may be a simple worry or slight anxiety about the unknown, something that most people experience in the run up to a huge life-changing event like birth.
But it could be that you are trying not to think about your birth, because every time you do you feel an awful pang of anxiety and fear. Your head starts whirring and you start spiralling and you don’t know how to stop it. This feeling is huge…
But it’s not your fault.
Fear of birth is so common that it even has a name, tokophobia, and for some women it can feel completely overwhelming.
Many of us grow up absorbing the message that birth is dangerous, frightening and something to fear. But that belief has been deeply rooted into our subconscious from years of exposure to films and series with dramatic and unrealistic scenes of birth.
Picture this scene:
A woman is most likely already in a stressful situation, perhaps in an argument with someone, when suddenly her waters break with a gush! This is followed by a sudden onset of intense contractions. The people around her panic. One grabs her and gets her to lie down, another is trying to tell her how to breathe, while another is calling an ambulance. All the while she has a terrified look on her face and she may even have begun pushing already!
The scene changes to her arrival in the delivery room. The doors are thrown open as she is wheeled into the room on the ambulance trolley, screaming ‘It’s coming!’. The baby is born suddenly under bright lights, with multiple healthcare professionals in the room, urgently telling the woman to push, all while the poor woman screams the house down, while lying on her back with her legs in the air, with a terrified partner holding her hand and repeating ‘relax’ over and over again.
The baby is born and suddenly the atmosphere is soft and fuzzy and lovely. The baby is passed to mum neatly wrapped in a towel and mum is beaming and calm as if all the drama has been forgotten.
Sound familiar?
The reality is that most births do not unfold like this.
Birth can be intense, unpredictable and deeply powerful, but it is not usually the chaotic emergency we so often see portrayed on screen.
And when women understand what birth is, what their body is doing and how to work with it, fear often begins to soften.
And alongside these dramatic portrayals of birth, many of us grow up completely disconnected from real birth too. A century ago, we would have seen our mothers, aunties, sisters and friends pregnant and birthing. We would have been a part of this normal womanly experience from our childhood. We would have heard the sounds of birth, seen the process unfold as it should and understood that it was simply a part of life.
Now hospitals limit who can be in the birth room, it is frowned upon for children to see or hear birth, and we aren’t taught the physiology of birth at school.
Experiences like this tell our subconscious over and over again that birth is to be feared. That we need medical help with it. That we will need relief from the pain. And sometimes medical support, intervention and pain relief are absolutely needed and incredibly valuable. But fear alone should not be the thing driving us towards them.
For some, you may have had a previous traumatic experience, either in birth or in life, which has made you feel that birth is unsafe. You have real life experience, which cements this idea into your mind. And it’s valid. But it doesn’t mean that you can’t feel safe, calm and confident in this birth.
You do not need to be fearless to have a good birth experience.
What actually reduces fear?
- Understanding physiology.
No you don’t need to do a degree to give birth, but a little awareness of what your pelvis looks like, how it functions, and how your baby navigates it in labour, how the movement of your body supports this and how the muscles of the uterus work to create contractions, goes a long way to take you from fear of the unknown, to ‘I know how to work with my body and my baby’.
- Informed choices.
You have choice over every aspect of your pregnancy and birth. Every.single.one. But these choices need to be balanced and unbiased and you need time to make them. Feeling a part of the decisions made, feeling well communicated to about those decisions and feeling respected with those decisions makes you feel safe and secure even if the result of those decisions was not your original plan.
- Good antenatal education.
Now this is a no brainer… I am a huge advocate of women being well informed. It is not about knowledge being power. It is not about you taking on all the responsibility. It’s about you taking ‘fear of the unknown’ out of the equation (mostly 😉).
If you understand that what is happening to your body is normal, it becomes less frightening. If you have at least half of an idea of what to expect when you go in for an induction, you won’t be overwhelmed. If you understand how the maternity system works you can be less fearful of it and get the most out of it.
One of the most difficult things to think after an experience is ‘I wish I had known, no-one told me.’
- Birth environment.
This is a biggie. Your body needs to feel safe to give birth efficiently and successfully. You need oxytocin.
Consciously choosing a birth environment which allows this to happen is an important part of birth prep. For some, this means birthing at home. Home birth has huge benefits and is evidence based to reduce complications and interventions. For others the hospital feels a safer place, but you need to think how you can adapt the environment to increase oxytocin. Low lighting, soft music, familiar smells/objects/pictures etc, all goes a long way to increasing oxytocin and reducing adrenaline (reducing the feeling of fear).
Do not leave this to chance.
- Supportive birth partners.
Your birth team is one of the most important decisions you can make. These are the people who will be your rock, your grounding force when you are hitting the panic line, your advocates, and your safety blanket. They need to be completely on your side, and they need to know you and what your wishes are. They might not be your partner. They might not be your mum. Despite these people being the most regularly seen in the birth room, they may not always be the most helpful to you. For some people, a best friend, a sister or a doula (professional birth partner) may be the most helpful. Consider your birth team very carefully.
And when it comes to your professional team, you don’t always have much forward awareness of who they may be. What is important to understand is that for all maternity healthcare professionals, especially midwives, a large part of their learning is about creating relationships quickly. You may not know your midwife when she walks in but by the end of the day you may feel she is one of the most important people in your life. However, if you feel that you aren’t clicking with the health care professional allocated to you, you are entitled to request a different one.
- Positive stories.
Purposefully seeking out positive birth stories, especially ones specific to your birth plan (home birth, water birth, VBAC, planned caesarean) can go a long way to counteracting the negative and dramatic stories we have heard our whole lives. Think written stories, positive birth videos, and podcasts.
Go train your social media algorithms!
- Hypnobirthing.
Ok this is my thing, so I’m obviously going to rave about it. But I can tell you, from a great deal of personal experience, that it helps so much.
Hypnobirthing isn’t about being hypnotised, it isn’t fluffy or rose-tinted, it isn’t only for hippy mums, those wanting unmedicated labours or those having a home birth in a yurt in their back garden. Hypnobirthing is about understanding the mind-body link and how that relates to labour. It’s mindfulness for labour. It’s nervous system regulation and about learning how to re-wire your brain after a lifetime of negative birth info.
Using guided relaxations, visualisations, breathing techniques, and good quality birth education it supports you to work with your body and surrender to the flow of labour. Hypnobirthing can be read about in books and self-taught, but it is best taught by a professionally trained practitioner for optimum results and support.
- Nervous system regulation.
This leads on nicely from hypnobirthing, because nervous system regulation is a big part of hypnobirthing, especially in the way it is taught in the Birth Your Own Way course.
Your nervous system is about your freeze/fight/flight vs your rest/digest modes. Regulating these mainly means supporting your body out of freeze/fight/flight when it doesn’t need to be there. On an everyday basis this can feel like a feeling of anxiety, rage or worry while you are trying to do everyday things. For some reason your body feels there is danger, but it can’t tell the difference between anxiety about an upcoming appointment or a sabre-toothed tiger coming in the room.
We must remind our bodies that they are safe, and this is especially important in labour because when adrenaline is produced, oxytocin is not and we need oxytocin for labour.
Learning to regulate your nervous system is a life skill (there are a huge number of ways to do this - my Pregnancy Relaxation Events are a good place to start) and can be especially useful in parenthood when things can become overwhelming!
- Asking questions.
Recommended to have a diabetes test? Ask what that is and what it involves.
Informed that the risk of stillbirth increases after 40 weeks? Ask for the evidence.
Informed that the best option right now would be to have a caesarean? Ask for the risks and benefits.
No question is silly. You have the right to know the answers. It gives you some control and helps you feel a part of what is going on. It means that you can make informed decisions and give proper consent and therefore feel safer in the care you receive.
- Processing previous trauma/fear.
Sometimes the fear and anxiety that you are feeling comes from somewhere deeper. In fact, most often it does. A traumatic previous birth, a scary experience previously in your life, a difficult relationship or a problematic childhood, can all leave their mark on our psyche and prevent us from feeling safe in situations. When it comes to your birth it can be worth trying to explore these and understand them, as you need to feel as safe as possible in labour.
This may be something you choose to explore yourself or with a coach or therapist. Birth strips us to our most vulnerable form and often, during pregnancy and labour, deep emotions rear their heads if they have been pushed down and ignored. Work through your fears and anxieties before you hit the labour room, explore them now and leave more emotional space for becoming a mother.
Fear of birth is incredibly common, but it is not something that we just have to put up with. Fear can be softened when you feel more knowledgeable, when your environment is a soothing oasis of safety and when the people around you are holding space and supporting you to regulate your nervous system. Anxiety melts when you know how to breathe, when you work with your body and when you are the centre of all decisions.
Birth does not happen to us; it is something we move through.
Sometimes things during labour do not go to plan and doing all the above recommendations can’t always prevent that. But you deserve to feel calm, confident, and safe leading up to birth and if plans change you feel mentally prepared to meet the decisions as they come.
You do not need to feel completely fearless before birth. You do not need to feel like a powerful goddess roaring her way into motherhood with absolute confidence and trust in her body. You just need support, understanding, preparation and people around you who help you feel safe.
And I cannot tell you what a difference that makes.
What next?
If you are preparing for birth and want to feel calmer, more informed and more confident in your choices, my antenatal hypnobirthing courses are designed to help you understand birth, work with your body and approach labour feeling supported rather than frightened.