Find out more about tokophobia
The Tokophobia Severity Scale: What It Measures, and What It Misses
A 13-question scale now scores tokophobia, and it was built for women who’ve never been pregnant. Alexia Leachman on what it gets right and what it leaves out.
We’ve Been Measuring Fear of Childbirth Too Simply. Two New Studies Show Why
Two new studies suggest one fear-of-birth score hides more than it shows. Alexia Leachman on what the research found, what it misses, and what needs to change.
16.5% of Women Fear Birth Enough for It to Shape Their Lives: The Numbers
By Alexia Leachman, founder of Fear Free Childbirth. Alexia healed her own tokophobia and developed the method she used to do it – and has helped women clear theirs for over 10 years. Here's a number worth sitting with: 16.5%. According to a 2026 meta-analysis...
When Fear Takes Over: The Abortions We Don’t Talk About
The Thing I Wish More People Knew Some of the most heartbreaking stories I hear don’t come from women who didn’t want children - but from those who did. Women who dreamed of motherhood… and still couldn’t continue the pregnancy. Not because they didn’t want the baby....
I Never Had the Right Words for My Fear… Until Now
For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived with a gnawing, wordless sense of dread around anything to do with pregnancy, birth, or even just the idea of becoming a mother. And yet, for years, I had no idea what to call it. I just knew that every time someone mentioned...
The Root of Toko: What If the Fear Didn’t Start With You?
I used to believe I just wasn’t “the maternal type”. That something in me was hard-wired wrong — why else would the idea of pregnancy or birth send shockwaves of fear through my body? But what if the real story started long before I was ever old enough to know the...
My Tokophobia Story – the birth of all this!
By Alexia Leachman, founder of Fear Free Childbirth. Alexia healed her own tokophobia and developed the method she used to do it – and has helped women clear theirs for over 10 years. I didn’t know I was living with tokophobia - until my body and mind made it...
What If the Anxiety You’ve Been Living With Isn’t Just “Anxiety”?
For years, I thought I was just “bad at life.” I felt anxious.Disconnected.Like something was always a bit off.And yet… I couldn’t quite explain why. I wasn’t broken. But I was barely coping. And then I saw two pink lines on a pregnancy test. What happened next felt...
In-Utero & Birth Imprint Trauma: The Hidden Factor Shaping Pregnancy Anxiety, Birth Fears, and Beyond
When people talk about birth trauma, they’re usually referring to the trauma a mother experiences while giving birth. But there’s another kind of birth trauma that almost no one talks about — the trauma of being born. This experience — what happens to us in the womb...
Could Your Own Birth Be Shaping Your Fears About Pregnancy and Birth?
If you struggle with the idea of pregnancy or birth—whether that’s full-blown tokophobia or just a deep unease—you’ve probably spent time wondering: Why do I feel this way? Maybe you’ve never had a traumatic experience related to birth.Maybe you haven’t heard any...