Social media ‘horror’ stories putting women off a natural childbirth

NHS NOTICES SURGE IN THE NUMBER OF MUMS-TO-BE ASKING FOR CAESAREANS

OVERSHARING on social media over the past five years has not only increased but become the norm.

And, as with anything in life, people are more likely to share and complain about the bad, then make a noise about the good.

Now, one Hull midwifery lecturer has claimed birth “horror” stories may be traumatising pregnant women and putting some people off childbirth altogether.

She says she was asked to research the phenomenon of women refusing to give birth naturally, after the NHS noticed a surge in healthy pregnant women asking for Caesareans – due to fears of giving birth vaginally.

Speaking at the British Science Festival, Catriona Jones, a lecturer in midwifery and a senior research fellow in the faculty of health sciences at the University of Hull, said these birth stories shared online are contributing to the rise of tocophobia – a phobia of childbirth.

Tocophobia is increasingly a problem, affecting up to 14 per cent of all pregnant women, according to research.

She told the festival: “If you go into Mumsnet forums, women are telling stories about childbirth – ‘it’s terrible, it’s a bloodbath’.

“I think that can be difficult to deal with.

“People have a tendency to like things that ramp up how dramatic childbirth can be and how difficult it can be. That can be a bit concerning sometimes.

“So you can be drawn to reading about that rather than women who give birth in a beautiful calm situation in a birthing pool or give birth at home surrounded by family.

“They generate a level of anxiety among women, particularly if they’re reading stories like this when they’re already pregnant.”

Roughly 14 per cent of pregnant women suffer from tocophobia, a study from last year claims, and the figure has been steadily rising since 2000.

Ms Jones was asked to investigate how best to treat women suffering from the condition by the local NHS perinatal mental health service team.

She said: “They came to us and said that women were being referred to them late on in pregnancy and they were having to work with them to unpick their fear of childbirth.”

Justine Roberts, Mumsnet founder and CEO, said: “Mumsnet users are, in the main, impatient with the idea that adult women aren’t entitled to discover the truth about the full spectrum of birth experiences, from the blissful to the terrifying.

“Understandably, a great deal of NHS messaging about labour focuses on the positive, but the downside of this is that mothers who have traumatic experiences feel, in retrospect, that they were given a deeply partial account: one of the most common complaints we see on this topic is, ‘Why on earth didn’t anyone tell me the truth about how bad it could be?”