Why You Are Scared of Birth (And How to Actually Change That)

PIN IT

If you have ever watched a birth scene in a tv show or a movie and just knew that some sort of crisis was for sure inevitable here, this episode of the Hot and Brave Podcast is going to blow your mind a little.

Season seven of the Hot+Brave podcast is here, y’all. 

Bianca is recording from her new drafty farmhouse in rural New Brunswick with storm sounds in the background and an absolute refusal to apologize for the delay because she is an adult who gave herself permission to take the time she needed. And we are so glad she is back.

This season kicks off with one of the most fascinating conversations we have had on the show. Bianca sits down with Dr. Sam V, a psychologist, sexual health educator, author, Indigenous informed full spectrum doula, yoga teacher, and sound therapist, and the founder of Sound Birthing. Sam has this extraordinary way of weaving together neuroscience, birth physiology, and human behavior in a way that is both deeply evidence-based and genuinely a little wacky in the best possible way.

And the conversation they have together will change how you think about birth fear permanently.

PIN IT

The screaming birth trope has a name. And it is ruining births.

Did you know that the fear of childbirth is so common it has a clinical name? Tokophobia. Before the pandemic, studies showed that 10 to 15 percent of women found the thought of childbirth so terrifying it affected their daily functioning. During the pandemic that number rose to 62 percent.

But here is the thing Sam and Bianca dig into together: we are not born afraid of birth. This fear is learned. And a huge part of where we learned it is television and movies.

There is actually something called the screaming birth trope, a cultural pattern so documented it has its own name, where birth is portrayed on screen as a catastrophic, agonizing emergency. And the problem is not just that it is inaccurate… It is that our brains are evolutionarily wired to believe what we are told as if our lives depend on it. So every dramatic TV birth we watched, every joke, every friend’s horror story, got stored in our nervous system as survival information.

And then labor starts.

The cortisol math that explains everything

Sam breaks down the relationship between cortisol, the stress hormone, and pain in a way that is so simple and so clarifying. Here is the short version.

The amount of cortisol in your body directly amplifies how much pain you experience. So a small amount of pain with high cortisol can feel enormous. And fear, of course, spikes cortisol instantly.

This is why the fear tension pain cycle in labor is so real and so brutal. You are afraid because of everything you have been told and shown about birth your whole life. That fear raises your cortisol. The cortisol amplifies the pain. The pain confirms the fear. And around and around it goes until you are convinced that birth is the worst experience a human being can have.

Except it does not have to be that way. And Sam explains exactly why.

PIN IT

The part about pooping is going to surprise you

This is not a throwaway bit. Sam makes a genuinely compelling case, backed by microbiome research, for why pooping during birth is not something to be embarrassed about. It is actually something to be proud of.

We are not going to give it all away here but we will say that by the end of this conversation you will have a completely different relationship with one of the things people fear most about birth. It involves your baby’s immune system, the gut-brain axis, and some fascinating evolutionary biology.

You are going to want to hear this one.

What Bianca shares that she has never said quite like this before

Bianca opens up about her own family’s birth history including her mom’s illegal home VBAC in 1988 that eight-year-old Bianca attended with one hand in the bowl with the bloody placenta and the other holding a peanut butter sandwich. She talks about how that experience shaped everything about how she sees birth.

And she and Sam get into a genuinely moving conversation about Bianca’s sister, who witnessed the same birth and went on to have one of the most heavily intervened, frightening birth experiences imaginable. Two people, same event, completely different outcomes. The conversation about why is one of the most thought-provoking moments of the episode.

Two practical tools you can use right now

Sam does not just explain the problem. They give you tools. Real ones. Including a breathing practice from traditional yoga that generates genuine physical heat, which matters a lot if you have ever labored in a freezing hospital room, and a calming breath that can bring your cortisol down in real time.

These are the kinds of tools that belong in every doula’s practice and in every pregnant person’s birth toolkit. Simple, evidence-based, and actually effective.

PIN IT

Listen to the full episode

This is the kind of conversation that makes you think differently. About fear. About your body. About what birth can actually be when we stop letting the screaming birth trope run the show.

And if this conversation sparks something in you about wanting to support families through birth with this kind of depth and understanding, we would love to talk to you about our full spectrum doula training. Click here to book a free call with us.

It runs every March and September and it is built for people who want to do this work with support and a whole lot of confidence. Check out our program here.

You can also email us anytime at [email protected]. We genuinely love hearing from y’all.

Welcome back to season seven. It is going to be a good one.