Introduction: Fear of childbirth is a common phenomenon. If the fear is pathological, it is called tokophobia. Purpose: In the first part of the thesis, we defined fear of childbirth and tokophobia as its ultimate form, and reviewed foreign studies on this subject. In the second part, we studied the attitude of women in Slovenia to fearing childbirth and how they respond. Methods: In the first part of the thesis, we used the descriptive method of research based on the review of foreign, Slovenian, professional and scientific literature. The literature was found by means of the following web browsers: Google Scholar, DiKUL, PubMED, CINAHL and MEDLINE. The key words for searching literature were tokofobija, tokofobia, tokophobia, fear of pregnancy, midwife, fear and childbirth. The literaure we used was up to 10 years old. In the second part, we applied the quantitative research approach, namely the survey method. A survey questionnaire was used as a research tool. We published the questionnaire on the EnKlik-Anketa web portal, where women of varying ages were ellectorally answeable. Results: The majority of respondents (50%) believe that the fear of birth is based on the fear of pain. We discovered that Slovenian women tend not to express their fear of giving birth to any professionals. In most cases, they confide in their husbands. We found out that most pregnant women (75%) would prefer a psychological way of alleviating fear of childbirth. In the event of fearing childbirth, women would choose a physiological vaginal delivery with birth pain relief. Only 18% of the respondents would choose a Caesarean section if that were an option. Most respondents (63) believe that granting a Ceasarean section to women suffering from tokophobia would results in their psychological as well as a better experience of childbirth. Discussion and conclusions: More than half of the respondents have experienced the fear of childbirth. We ascertained that the respondents would nevertheless choose physiological vaginal delivery. We conclude that, with support, early diagnosis of fear of childbirth and appropriate treatment, we could adequately prepare and support women during labour.
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