It’s not unusual for women to worry about how they’ll cope with pregnancy and childbirth – it is, after all, a life altering experience. But while a degree of worry is normal, an all-consuming anxiety could be a sign of tokophobia – a morbid fear of childbirth.

Tokophobia, which comes from the Greek ‘tocos’, meaning childbirth, is thought to affect as many as one in 10 women. It can manifest itself in several different ways: for some women the idea of being pregnant and giving birth is so horrifying that they avoid it altogether and decide not to have children, while others significantly delay starting a family.

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