The stock Crisis Reaction F Menu has been expanded; to oversimplify, in addition to Fight and Flight, there's Friend (seek assistance/support--which your heroine seems to have done the first time around), Freeze, and Flop (submit/resign/comply.) A brief jargon-heavy essay on the subject: http://www.zoelodrick.co.uk/training/article-1... )
Well... one thing to keep in mind: a phobia is an irrational fear. It's not irrational to fear that which can really hurt or kill you. Childbirth is guaranteed to hurt a great deal, even if it goes perfectly, and there are a lot of ways it can go horribly wrong - especially for a poor woman in a society without advanced medicine.
" I'm afraid that I don't really know how encountering the trigger feels, and what always comes to mind is the "hysterical fear reaction" seen in most portrayals of phobias (and internet stories)."
By "encountering the trigger", do you mean "realizing she's pregnant"? Yeah, there could be some hysterical fear reaction there, crying and wailing - pregnancy disrupts the hormonal balance, so there can be a lot of crying even without psychological problems. But one can neither fight nor flee the normal processes of one's own body - except by suicide, and suicidal ideation would definitely be likely. (The cultural ramifications around that would be quite different in medieval Kyoto from what they are in the
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I will note that while most people do not think of childbirth as a walk in the park, someone who's had good breathing exercises and whatnot might have an uncomfortable, but not excruciating, childbirth. (My mom talks about having me -- nine pounds and 3 ounces -- as "oh, you were so easy, I could've had you every other week." I was born at home, and arrived about a quarter-hour before the doctor did.)
So a good, experienced midwife (with a personality that meshes with that of the person in labor) might help a lot, along with the person in labor being a good responder to endorphins to mask pain. But I'd definitely be looking up home-births and no-anesthetic births and whatnot.
(Can't look at me for any direct experiences on that one, though; quasi-emergency c-section with an epidural. Never even had a Braxton-Hicks contraction. I was kind of bummed out by that.)
I had great breathing exercises, and was doing all right through the first 18 hours of labor, but then things got bad: I wasn't dilating, and my baby's heartbeat was going down during contractions, so finally they gave me an epidural, opened my cervix up manually, and gave me a pitocin drip.
If I had chosen to give birth at home (as I had really wanted to do) instead of at an excellent modern hospital, my baby would probably have been stillborn. As it was, she was born pink and healthy, just about 24 hours after my labor first started.
Those epidurals sure are great stuff! I remember laying there watching the digital read-out on the fetal monitor as it measured the strength of my contractions in triple digits, and I didn't feel a thing. Considering how they felt at only half that strength before the epidural and pitocin, I shudder to think what they'd have felt like if I could feel them.
what was the cause of the phobia if the first pregnancy was a relatively good experience? considering the time period you're using one would think she'd have a fear of sex or however the Japanese viewed conception at the time instead.
inugami is 'dog demon' right? have you looked into how pregnant dogs act when there's problems? or inugami mythos in general?
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" I'm afraid that I don't really know how encountering the trigger feels, and what always comes to mind is the "hysterical fear reaction" seen in most portrayals of phobias (and internet stories)."
By "encountering the trigger", do you mean "realizing she's pregnant"? Yeah, there could be some hysterical fear reaction there, crying and wailing - pregnancy disrupts the hormonal balance, so there can be a lot of crying even without psychological problems. But one can neither fight nor flee the normal processes of one's own body - except by suicide, and suicidal ideation would definitely be likely. (The cultural ramifications around that would be quite different in medieval Kyoto from what they are in the ( ... )
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So a good, experienced midwife (with a personality that meshes with that of the person in labor) might help a lot, along with the person in labor being a good responder to endorphins to mask pain. But I'd definitely be looking up home-births and no-anesthetic births and whatnot.
(Can't look at me for any direct experiences on that one, though; quasi-emergency c-section with an epidural. Never even had a Braxton-Hicks contraction. I was kind of bummed out by that.)
Reply
If I had chosen to give birth at home (as I had really wanted to do) instead of at an excellent modern hospital, my baby would probably have been stillborn. As it was, she was born pink and healthy, just about 24 hours after my labor first started.
Those epidurals sure are great stuff! I remember laying there watching the digital read-out on the fetal monitor as it measured the strength of my contractions in triple digits, and I didn't feel a thing. Considering how they felt at only half that strength before the epidural and pitocin, I shudder to think what they'd have felt like if I could feel them.
Reply
inugami is 'dog demon' right? have you looked into how pregnant dogs act when there's problems? or inugami mythos in general?
Reply
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