An event like no other in life – birth, full of unknowns with great experience and sensations. Today’s birth environmental, hospitals, are benefiting from advanced technology. But the doctor, neonatal participation, and birth, never ceases to produce lots of fear for both men and women.
What would scare women? Some would say that the pain, some would say that is a related fear of child’s life, put to the test during labor. In other cases, pregnancy complications or previous miscarriages.
Sure, psychologically, many things contribute to this fear and some of the most important are women’s history and its relations with others, especially his mother. Every woman has an image of birth.
It is made over time, fantasy, stories from her mother, other women stories from their own sensations, as experienced in pregnancy, as it evolved. Equally important is your relationship with the doctor who oversaw the task and relationship with other health interventions.
Somehow you expect the birth of a woman who knows that her mother suffered much to bring the baby in the world, who otherwise enjoyed a close and encouragement of her mother, a fact which considers birth as a normal and natural process, otherwise this can be considered an event full of danger and suffering.
Fear of pain, fear for the baby’s life, health and its state, fear of their own deaths are in the first places in the list of fears made by women. Childbirth has always been regarded with great ambivalence and times when the birth mother is dying or the baby is not well.
On the one hand eagerly awaited to see the child in her arms to be convinced that is whole and healthy, to “escape” the burden of pregnancy, difficult to wear in recent months. On the other hand, fear of the unknown: “what will happen, for how long, how to get over this, how much will it hurt, I will support this, the baby will be fine”, and so on..
Questions and concerns that no one can answer in advance. They are extremely easy and fast deliveries, other complications occurring in the mother or the fetus, others needed a cesarean section or emergency help for the baby. Medical advances have brought so much control by cesarean possibilities but which is not without risk or pain, and epidural anesthesia.
Then investigations during pregnancy, allow mothers and physicians to know something about the baby, calculate risks and take steps in advance. It’s a big difference between women who received preparation for childbirth, which receives support from partner and family and all those who lack it. Also, good relationship with the medical doctor who has followed the continuity of pregnancy, and confidence in him, reduce fear and anxiety.
Another category is the women who had medical history related to birth trauma, miscarriage, abortion. In these cases, special care is needed (psychologically) to overcome past trauma, otherwise there are chances for it to happen again. The horror is so great that it invalidates the normal functioning of the body and can block many biological processes.