Despite the many platitudes about the "journey to motherhood," not all women look forward to actually being pregnant. Even a so-called "easy" pregnancy creates major physical and mental changes, and at worst, complications such as preeclampsia and placenta previa can be life-threatening. Small wonder, then, that the idea of going through the nine-month ordeal fills some would-be moms with dread. The clinical term for fear of childbirth is tokophobia, and it's more common than you might think.
A 2016 study from the University of Michigan found that some 30% of women experience tokophobia. That percentage skyrocketed during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with researchers at Dartmouth University reporting 62% of subjects fearing childbirth. Count Paris Hilton among that number. In an interview with Glamour UK, conducted just a day before the birth of her son, the reality star confirmed that she always intended to use a surrogate when the time came to start a family, regardless of her age.
"I want a family so bad, it's just the physical part of doing it," she explained. "I'm just so scared [...] childbirth and death are the two things that scare me more than anything in the world." Hilton became a client of the same surrogacy doctor her longtime friend Kim Kardashian used. Amid the COVID lockdown, she and her new husband, Carter Reum, went through multiple procedures to create a store of embryos. Now, they're the proud parents of two healthy babies.
