Tokophobic

[…]Kristina Hofberg, Britain’s “leading expert on the syndrome,” who claims that just thinking about birth can make tokophobic women anxious.

Interestingly, a 2008 British study found that almost half of pregnant women who request a Caesarean section do so because they have a genuine fear of childbirth. In fact, it’s estimated that one in seven women may be tokophobic. It’s thanks to all those damned horror stories from our dear, beloved friends and families. You know the ones. Your mother insists that her labour lasted 78 hours and that the resulting baby was so big, the doctors christened it Moby Dick and sent in a Japanese whaling fleet.

In framing her birth story in this way, Beyoncé veered away from the tokophobic assumptions that have normalized pain avoidance as a customary part of birth culture.