Understanding Anxiety, Worry and Fear in Childbearing: A Resource for Midwives and Clinicians

Description

This book informs and enlighten health professionals on how the recognition of fearing women can change their episode of care during childbearing. It gives practical advice on the way women present to services and the challenges that this invokes. This work is the first of its kind aimed at clinicians to deconstruct ideology around childbearing myths and its challenges. The authors review the evidence that exists and how modern maternity systems are responding to fear and shaping healthcare. Whilst some worry and anxiety is expected and indeed considered normal during childbearing, it has been suggested that this has now proliferated to a degree of abnormal for many women. Why is that and how is this panic spread? Media portrayal of birth is suggested as unrealistic material and to show only that which is dramatic and horrific. This has been considered as one factor influencing modern women. Medicalisation, technology and demand upon services is another consequence of providing almost all maternity care in hospitals. Given that the majority of childbearing women are fit and healthy is this another causative factor? By removing women from their homes and families at such a vulnerable time has a serious consequence for how she will experience her greatest leap of faith into motherhood. All of these issues are explored and examined in the book with ideas and practical suggestions of what may be done to change this increasingly common problem. This book is intended at midwives and clinicians working in maternity settings. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii History of Fear and Childbearing (Maeve O’Connell, Rhona O’Connell)....Pages 1-18 Global Perspectives of Childbirth Fear Including the Relevant Evidence (Helen Haines)....Pages 19-29 Understanding Fear, Physiology and Finding an Explanation of How the Mind Influences Us During Childbearing (Kathryn Gutteridge)....Pages 31-52 Fear of Birth and Modern Maternity Systems of Care (Geraldine Butcher, Clare Willocks)....Pages 53-74 Gathering Storm–Birth in the Media (Tracey Cooper, Laura Godfrey-Isaacs)....Pages 75-95 Childhood Sexual Abuse, Sexual Assault, Rape and Its Relevance to Childbearing Fear (Kathryn Gutteridge)....Pages 97-119 ‘Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Birth’: Childbirth Trauma, Fear and Tokophobia (Kathryn Gutteridge, Yana Richens)....Pages 121-146 Working with Worry and Inspiring Hope: Relationships with Anxious and Fearful Women (Hannah Dahlen, Alison Teate, Simone Ormsby, Virginia Schmied)....Pages 147-169 ‘Getting it Right First Time’: The Effects of Anxiety and Fear on a Birthing Woman (Helen Shallow)....Pages 171-188 Maternity Policy and a Generation of Anxiety and Fear (Julia Lidderdale, Kathryn Gutteridge)....Pages 189-209 Never Safer; Never More Afraid: Women’s Voices and Stories of Childbearing and Fear (Cathy Williams)....Pages 211-237 Shifting Tides—from Storm to Salvation (Sheena Byrom, Anna Byrom)....Pages 239-253