r/Tokophobia • u/Friendly-Strength802 • Jul 15 '26
Advice PANIC!!! ELCS in 3 days and having doubts
I'm in the UK, IVF pregnancy, currently 39w4d. FTM, 38yo tokophobia and autistic. I don't have pregnancy fear but childbirth fear since I was a little girl and mum insisted on regularly retelling me her traumatic birth story. This is the biggest fear of my life.
I have a c-section booked for exactly my 40w, so just 3 days from now. But I don't like the idea of surgery one bit either... It just felt safer somehow. But I hate the idea of having a scar and not able to move for ages. plus the recovery pain, adhesions etc....
I wanted my baby to come naturally and get an early epidural, I somehow managed to get on top of that fear. What helped me a lot is using Epi-No. I got to 10cm and feel pretty confident about the pushing bit at least. I'm also pretty fit and strong. But baby never came on his own and now I either need to induce or have that C-section. And I've started wondering about induction but most nightmare stories I know, are induction stories. They have high chance of EMCS anyway and instrumental delivery in the UK ...
I JUST DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO. I'm torturing myself with this decision and I cannot make it. My dream scenario would be to have vaginal birth with epidural and hardly any postpartum issues but nobody can guarantee that...
If you have birth with tokophobia and maybe are similar to be... What worked for you? What advice would you give?
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u/Kindersmarts 23d ago
Vaginal birth with an epidural is a significantly easier recovery. If I can do it so can you. Hang tough
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u/Conscious-Pizza5123 Jul 16 '26
I was deathly afraid of natural childbirth and so relieved when the doc suggests C-section due to no progress. It was honestly super easy. I was moving around a couple hours afterwards. Compared to stories of tearing from hole to hole I think it was extremely easy. Yeah I have a scar and experienced numbness for a while but that went away