It starts with a traumatic birth. A woman’s pregnancy may end in unwanted medical intervention, complications, an emergency C-section, a loss of feeling in control. Then, she shares her story online as part of her healing process, unwittingly feeding the fears of pregnant women frantically Googling their worst fears. These woman, filled with the horror stories they’ve read online, go into their birth more fearful of what could go wrong, and the stress makes their labour longer and more painful. And the cycle continues.

Fear of childbirth, otherwise known as tokophobia, isn’t talked about all that often, even among the women suffering with it. So when Catriona Jones, senior research fellow in maternal and reproductive health and lecturer in midwifery at the University of Hull, spoke at the British Science Festival about the need for early detection and treatment of tokophobia, an article in The Guardian quoted her saying it was on the increase, and that scare stories on social media were to blame.

“When I spoke with the journalists at the festival, I wouldn’t fully commit to saying that levels of tokophobia are on the rise, nor did I say that social media was the leading cause; I was misquoted,” Jones says.

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• Is it any wonder women are terrified of childbirth?

The truth is that the university’s research team has found that social media can help to both stoke and quell childbirth fears. Telling birth stories on forums including Mumsnet can be cathartic, Jones says, but the media relating to birth that women are exposed to online may also play a part in setting birth up as a negative experience.

“But we were never saying that social media causes tokophobia, and we’re not telling women to stop telling their stories.”

Nevertheless, the article caused a media storm. The attention put a spotlight on an overlooked condition, and, ironically, encouraged women to get in touch with Jones and her colleague and professor of midwifery Julie Jomeen, who leads on the university’s perinatal mental health research programme, to thank them for talking about the issue.

“They told us they didn’t get pregnant because of their fears, that if they’d known people who’d have helped them throughout pregnancy it would’ve made big difference, that they had one baby and would’ve had a second,” Jomeen says.

Tokophobia can affect women on their first pregnancy, subsequent pregnancies, or discourage them from ever going through with a pregnancy. It can be triggered by many things, including fear of pain, a previous difficult childbirth, depression, or .......ual trauma.

Researchers from Ireland reviewed 33 studies over the past 50 years and concluded that approximately 14 per cent of women may experience severe tokophobia. Many more cases go under the radar, both from women who never get pregnant because of their fears, and those who are reluctant to tell anyone. The University of Hull’s tokophobia research stemmed from medical professionals saying that they’re seeing women with tokophobia too late on in their pregnancy.

“They say that, by the time women tell them they’re frightened, it’s 37 weeks into the pregnancy and birth is imminent, and it’s challenging to intervene at that late stage,” Jomeen says.

But routine antenatal appointments aren’t long enough for women to speak in depth about their worries, argues Siobhan Miller, founder of The Positive Birth Company, which supports women to use hypnobirthing.

“It’s an under-resourced area and midwives haven’t got the time,” Miller says. “Often, women see different midwives for each appointment, so the woman has to start from the top each time and they keep their fear quiet until their last appointment, when they’re on the cusp of giving birth.”

And when pregnant women suffering with this fear don’t know who to turn to, Miller argues, they turn to social media, where they’re likely to find the worst-case scenarios.

“We’re hearing about people’s traumas and not the other side, that voice isn’t there; birth can be amazing, or at least straightforward. These stories are causing women to be really frightened about it and that’s damaging,” says Miller, who started #PositiveBirthStoryProject on Instagram to encourage women to share happier birth stories.

There is support out there for those who’ve had traumatic births – including CBTand the NHS’s debrief sessions for women who develop tokophobia after a traumatic birth, where a senior midwife runs through the woman’s notes to understand what happened. But with such long waiting lists, the internet gives people an outlet while they’re in line for treatment.