Rebuilding confidence in women's abilities in birth

in order to provide care. The draft guideline continues by advising that women who still find the prospect of vaginal birth unacceptable, should be offered a planned caesarean section. In effect therefore, the guideline basically describes what is currently the status quo in most NHS hospitals. It does, however, give the opportunity for the development of a consistent national approach to supporting women who have severe anxiety about birth and help to build a true picture of the numbers involved and enable research on a range of supportive approaches. There can be no doubt that there are some women who are genuinely terrified of giving birth due to past experience of sexual abuse or rape or to the psychiatric condition ‘tocophobia’. We do not currently know how many women make up these groups. We