Fear of birth, and the loop into the next one
Around one woman in six has a severe fear of giving birth. In women who have given birth before, the strongest predictor is the last birth.
Fear of childbirth is common enough that it should be treated as an ordinary part of the conversation rather than something to confess.
A 2017 meta-analysis of 29 studies covering 853,988 pregnant women put the pooled prevalence at 14% (95% CI 12 to 16), with individual studies ranging from 3.7% to 43%. A 2026 update covering 67 studies and 905,504 women put severe fear at 16.5% (95% CI 13.8 to 19.5), with studies ranging from 3.7% to 58.7%. Its authors summarise it as severe FoC affects approximately one in six women globally.
In that larger analysis, having a first baby carried an odds ratio of 1.36 (95% CI 1.04 to 1.76) against having given birth before, and an unplanned pregnancy 1.85 (1.29 to 2.65). Those are relative measures only. The analysis publishes no prevalence of severe fear for the groups being compared, so there is no way to turn either odds ratio into women per hundred, and none is invented here.
The loop. A review of 21 studies concluded that since the strongest predictor for fear in parous women is a previous negative birth experience or operative birth, we suggest it is important to distinguish between fear of childbirth and fear after birth.
Put that next to the finding two topics up: fear of childbirth is itself one of the pre-birth risk factors for childbirth-related PTSD, with a correlation of 0.41. A birth that went badly is not a closed event. It is an input to the next pregnancy, and to how that one is experienced.
This is a strong practical argument for treating a difficult birth seriously at the time, and for taking a woman's account of a previous birth seriously when she arrives pregnant again.
"My last birth was frightening. I want that in my notes and I want us to plan around it."
"I am afraid of giving birth. Is there someone here who works with that?"