Navigating Fear
There is a strong relationship between fear and birth. Fear is normal, but can very easily become consuming and interfere with the body’s labor process. With any unknown, and each birth is, no matter how many times you have done it, there comes some degree of fear or anxiety. It’s hard to relinquish control and to go into something so huge with so much at stake. Common fears for birth range anywhere from perineal tearing, interventions like inductions or episiotomy, or sometimes surgery or a c-section.
Every fear, no matter how small or how big is valid and deserves to be processed. The more fear that is brought into the labour, the more tense a woman is and the more tense she is, the more painful labour can be. We talk so much about women needing to relax in labour, to not fight the pain and to rest. Relaxing and releasing fear directly affects how well a woman can rest in between contractions and direct her energy during a contraction to work with her body in labour. If she is consumed with fear, even if it is just fear of the next contraction, she cannot work with her body and it may even work against the progression of labour.
If there is fear, anxiety, lack of privacy or a feeling of being unsafe, the body can close or stall rather than opening and progressing.