Tocophobia - Fear of Childbirth
I'm glad to finally have a name for a fear I've had for as long as I can remember - Tocophobia. The fear of childbirth. I had no idea that it was a somewhat common condition, affecting possibly up to 1/7th of women. I was going to post this under RRC&C, but upon second thought, I want other women to be aware of this too if they have it, and to discuss it. Maybe even men too who are afraid of aspects of pregnancy. I have a feeling that I would be disturbed by the thought of women giving birth even if I were a male. Of course no one finds pregnancy pleasant, but this fear goes beyond what most women feel.
I'll briefly describe what it's like for me. This is the first time I've ever expressed this without downplaying the severity. It isn't merely a fear of the pain. It's more complicated than that and is a difficult-to-describe, irrational fear. The whole process of pregnancy is disturbing, not just the birth part. Knowing that there's a living thing growing inside you and feeding off of you is downright creepy. I feel repulsed and want to get away whenever I see a pregnant woman because that swollen belly looks so disturbing and unnatural to me. I can hardly bear to hear someone discussing pregnancy, and simple words like 'uterus' make me cringe. And the word 'cringe' is brought to a whole other level for me when I'm forced to hear about pregnancy complications in detail. I have nightmares about being pregnant or giving birth occasionally and they're worse than any other kind of nightmare. I'm glad that I don't want to have kids for entirely separate reasons, because even if I did want them, I would never be able to endure the pregnancy required. Specifically, I have primary tocophobia, which basically means I've had it since adolescence, while secondary tocophobia results from previous birthing complications. I have no idea how it started with me. Whether it's a genetic fear or I acquired it from some childhood experience which I've long forgotten.
I don't usually admit this because I've always been ashamed of it, and when I do discuss it, I under exaggerate the fear because I feel like I'm being judged negatively. Most women who have had kids seem to have pride in the fact that the pregnancy was painful. Even though they know it will hurt, they aren't that afraid, as the excitement of the expected result of it all (the baby) overcomes any fear. It's treated as this sort of "woman power" thing. So if they heard someone like me expressing a fear so intense that I'd never have kids for that reason alone, they would probably view me negatively. They wouldn't understand the intensity of the fear and would think I was just being immature and not embracing womanhood or something. That I'm weak and need to toughen up. And I fear this might be true in a way, that I'm missing some essential 'woman' traits in my brain. It's the same feeling I get when I hear a bunch of women talking about how much they love shopping, or someone being good around kids (a whole other issue). Or that's how I used to think until I realized it was a known fear, and it doesn't necessarily make me a bad person.