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 modern West.)
[EDIT: abortion in that era had a very high probability of resulting in death by hemorrhage, infection or poisoning, depending on the method tried. There are easier, less painful ways to commit suicide.]
"For context: the secondary ends up occurring with her second child after having a fairly positive and trouble-free experience (and very supportive environment) with her first."
Okay. "Fairly positive, trouble-free and supportive" would still have meant hours and hours of excruciating pain, the very real threat of dying and/or having a dead or deformed baby, and all the body-shame that goes with performing this unseemly biological function - especially for a young, low-status woman in a very shame-focused culture. The fact that people were kind, and she and her child both survived, doesn't mean the whole experience wasn't a nightmare - now she has to go through it again.
Her feelings would be complicated by her love for her first-born: what happens to that child if she doesn't survive this new birth, or if she's too debilitated to care for two children? If she kills herself to escape the horror, she takes her new baby's life, and leaves her living child an orphan - probably she believes that she would then become a 'hungry ghost', damned to eternal torment.
One of the horrible 'features' of pregnancy is the way it engenders particularly vivid nightmares of harm to one's baby. This has an evolutionary purpose, in that it causes reaction formation - Mother Nature wants us to feel anxious about our babies' health and safety, because more of them survive that way. It's still horrible, though, and contributes to the sleep-deprivation that comes along with the physical discomfort of pregnancy. Sleep deprivation can make the healthiest, happiest person go crazy - especially being afraid to sleep because the dreams are so real.
In medieval Japan, the supposition would be that nightmares, crying jags and similar distress had a supernatural cause - ghosts, demons or whatever - rather than a psychological one. Therefore, the remedies tried would be things like chanting, charms and rituals - which might at least provide some comfort.
Pregnancy is a finite process; it doesn't last forever, and all one really has to do is just keep breathing until it's over. Postpartum is a whole different deal, of course - it's not like one gives birth and everything goes back to how it was pre-pregnancy; there's still a lot of pain, sleep deprivation and hormonal weirdness to follow, plus the all-consuming demands of caring for a newborn. But at least one is no longer pregnant! ^^
" 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 modern West.)
[EDIT: abortion in that era had a very high probability of resulting in death by hemorrhage, infection or poisoning, depending on the method tried. There are easier, less painful ways to commit suicide.]
"For context: the secondary ends up occurring with her second child after having a fairly positive and trouble-free experience (and very supportive environment) with her first."
Okay. "Fairly positive, trouble-free and supportive" would still have meant hours and hours of excruciating pain, the very real threat of dying and/or having a dead or deformed baby, and all the body-shame that goes with performing this unseemly biological function - especially for a young, low-status woman in a very shame-focused culture. The fact that people were kind, and she and her child both survived, doesn't mean the whole experience wasn't a nightmare - now she has to go through it again.
Her feelings would be complicated by her love for her first-born: what happens to that child if she doesn't survive this new birth, or if she's too debilitated to care for two children? If she kills herself to escape the horror, she takes her new baby's life, and leaves her living child an orphan - probably she believes that she would then become a 'hungry ghost', damned to eternal torment.
One of the horrible 'features' of pregnancy is the way it engenders particularly vivid nightmares of harm to one's baby. This has an evolutionary purpose, in that it causes reaction formation - Mother Nature wants us to feel anxious about our babies' health and safety, because more of them survive that way. It's still horrible, though, and contributes to the sleep-deprivation that comes along with the physical discomfort of pregnancy. Sleep deprivation can make the healthiest, happiest person go crazy - especially being afraid to sleep because the dreams are so real.
In medieval Japan, the supposition would be that nightmares, crying jags and similar distress had a supernatural cause - ghosts, demons or whatever - rather than a psychological one. Therefore, the remedies tried would be things like chanting, charms and rituals - which might at least provide some comfort.
Pregnancy is a finite process; it doesn't last forever, and all one really has to do is just keep breathing until it's over. Postpartum is a whole different deal, of course - it's not like one gives birth and everything goes back to how it was pre-pregnancy; there's still a lot of pain, sleep deprivation and hormonal weirdness to follow, plus the all-consuming demands of caring for a newborn. But at least one is no longer pregnant! ^^
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