‘Mumsnet horror stories’ scare women into caesareans

 Horrific tales of childbirth from friends and social media forums like Mumsnet are driving women to request caesarean sections, a leading midwife has warned.

Catriona Jones, a lecturer in midwifery at the University of Hull, said up to 14 per cent of expectant mothers now suffer from tocophobia, which is defined as an unreasonable dread of childbirth.

Mrs Jones warned that harrowing accounts on TV dramas and social media were fuelling the problem and called on mothers to avoid sharing their birthing horror stories.

Speaking at the British Science Festival in Hull, Mrs Jones said: “If you go online and you go into any of the Mumsnet forums there are women telling their stories of childbirth, and it was terrible, it was a bloodbath, and that can be quite frightening for women to engage with.

“People have a tendency to like things that are a bit morbid and a bit scary and people are drawn towards that. I wonder if sometimes the ramping up of how traumatic childbirth can be, that can be concerning.”

Women with fear of childbirth are almost three times more likely to develop postnatal depression and are at greater risk of suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Mrs Jones said women often did not admit they had tocophobia until around a month before the birth, when they asked for a caesarean section because they were too scared to deliver naturally.