A new B.C. study is investigating why some pregnant women experience a fear of childbirth so severe it has a debilitating effect on their lives.

Nichole Fairbrother, the director of the Perinatal Anxiety Research Lab at the B.C. Women's Hospital and Health Centre, says while a quarter of women experience some fear of childbirth, a small percentage experience an intense fear.

"Somewhere in the region of five per cent of pregnant women experience a level of childbirth fear that is so intense they decide not to become pregnant, or it really interferes with their ability to enjoy their life normally," she explained.

Fairbrother said these fears can manifest in worries about their health or their unborn baby's health, being embarrassed by different medical interventions required during pregnancy, or concerns about changes to their body and appearance, due to the childbirth experience.

These fears can have significant consequences, she added.

"Fear of childbirth has been associated with a number of negative outcomes for moms and their babies [like] some difficulties in the mother-baby relationships postnatally, increased anxiety for the mother postnatally, more negative birth experience and post-birth trauma.

"It can also lead to some emotional numbing which can obviously affect their feelings for their newborn infant," she said.

Listen to the interview with Nichole Fairbrother on CBC's The Early Edition:

Fairbrother's team is conducting a study on how the fear of childbirth affects pregnant women because there is currently no easy way to measure or screen for fear of childbirth.

"Hopefully, we can develop a screening tool [that] will allow us to distinguish between women who are suffering from a more normal level of fear of childbirth versus women who are suffering from more severe, clinically-meaningful fear," she said.

The study is currently seeking participants who are pregnant, over 19 and reside in British Columbia.

With files from The Early Edition