It is by no means the rôle of the nurse to pry into the affairs of her patients, but she can often become the avenue of ventilation for a patient suffering from a mental conflict, and with very happy results. For one of the most helpful things that such a person can do is to talk, and little by little bring out and put into words the buried thoughts, dreads or shame that may be causing the conflict. Very often the listener will say surprisingly little and will express no definite opinions, but by a sympathetic, responsive attitude encourage the worried person to pour out the content of her mind. Another source of unrest in the mind of the expectant mother, especially during her first pregnancy, is the fear of death during labor, or the development of complications. She is reluctant to speak of these things to her husband, family or friends, lest they laugh at her or regard her as a coward at the prospect of pain. Or she may be unwilling to distress those who love her by admitting her fear. Fear of death and disease are very common traits and equally common is the hesitancy we all have in acknowledging them. And so the patient keeps these things to herself and turns them over and over in her mind; buries them and tries to put them out of her thoughts. But they stick. Her fear and her dread color everything that she hears, and very often and unwittingly her friends and relatives make matters worse by recounting the unhappy experiences of other mothers that they have known. At the same time these communicative friends do not tell of the immeasurably greater number of women who have come through safely, nor does the patient dwell upon these in her mind. She remembers the women who had convulsions or fever or a hemorrhage, or the one who died. The nurse who sees the human being beyond the obstetrical case will appreciate the pain which such a conflict causes and by being sympathetic and responsive will try to make it easy for her patient to talk it over. The patient should invariably find her nurse ready to listen and to give assurances of the proved value of the precautions that are being taken to safeguard her and her baby. For not a few women are torn, not alone by the fear that things will go wrong with themselves, but with the fear that harm may come to the baby that they long to take into their arms and keep. Other women are upset because of a habitual inability to make decisions that will bring about a marked change in their lives. They find it difficult to accept pregnancy because its consummation will definitely alter their state. Life may prove to be more satisfactory because of the baby, or it may be less so. But in any event it cannot be the same and they dread making an irrevokable change.