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Home › Articles › Considering Pregnancy › Too Scared to Conceive

Too Scared to Conceive

When Your Fears Are Holding You Back from Motherhood

By Teri Brown

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Walter Smitson, Ph.D., is a professor of psychiatry at the University of Cincinnati. He says that sometimes these fears stem from too much knowledge of what can go wrong. "We live in an age of anxiety," he says. "There are more events and dangers feeding our fears than at any time since the second World War. The more knowledge we have, the more we know about what can go wrong. It, therefore, helps to remind people to keep things in perspective."

Regardless of the fear's source, people with this type of anxiety are afraid they would not know how to parent an impaired child. "Fear has a way of feeding on itself," says Smitson. "It's true that we need to be informed and to use good judgment. However, we need to balance that with the enormous advances in health care."

Too Scared to Conceive-When Your Fears Are Holding You Back

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Smitson says our knowledge of genetics has heightened people's fears about something lurking inside that can create problems later. He suggests that action steps can greatly reduce these fears. "For example, if a person is fearful before pregnancy, then genetic testing can help, along with researching one's family history," he says. "In other words, while some information can scare us, finding additional information can sometimes quiet those fears. In this sense, information can be seen as a positive instead of something to be feared."


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