Childbirth is often painted as beautiful and natural — but for many women, the fear is overwhelming.
And that fear has a name: tokophobia.
Tokophobia is defined as an extreme fear of childbirth that can cause some women to take excessive measures in order to avoid pregnancy. And Abbie Halberstadt, a mother of 10, while a major advocate for pregnancy and childbirth, understands those women who are paralyzed with fear.
When she was a few weeks out from her labor with her eighth child, she started having “significant anxiety in the evenings.”
“This is my number eight … and I have tokophobia. I mean, I am like, ‘I can’t do this again. Like, I can’t,’” she tells BlazeTV host Allie Beth Stuckey on “Relatable,” explaining that she had the closest thing she’s ever had to a “full-blown panic or anxiety attack.”
“I woke up contracting in the middle of the night … in the middle of a contraction and could not catch my breath. My heart started racing,” she explains.
And while she understands the fear, she believes that there’s a problem with the way women think about pregnancy and childbirth that leads to this extreme fear.
“I think the problem is that the mindset that is feeding this is ‘hard things are bad things.’ Hard is not the same thing as bad,” she says.
“I think when we’re picturing birth or picturing pregnancy, and I’m even, you know, talking to myself, I have a lot of fear surrounding all of that, having done it three times already, it’s like I can trust that God is a good shepherd, that he’s going to lead me where He wants to lead me,” Stuckey agrees.
“Not that it’s going to be perfect or easy,” she continues, “and also that His goodness and His mercy will follow me and will accomplish in and through and behind and around me everything that God wants them to accomplish.”
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