Was my birth traumatic?

As a birth and perinatal counsellor, women often tell me that they don't know if what they experienced was birth trauma. 

In this article, I'll unpack some of the common questions that may be on your mind to help you start making sense of birth.

Who gets to decide if my birth was traumatic?

First, birth trauma is a highly personal experience and can only defined by you – the person who experienced it.

X Not by a healthcare professional.
X Not by how the birth looked on paper.
X Not by how 'bad' the birth was compared to someone else's. 

It's all about how you felt. The fear, overwhelm, guilt, grief, disappointment, anger, rage, disconnection or numbness.

It's about the safety of you, your baby or your partner being threatened.

And it’s about how you feel afterwards, and the parts that have stayed with you.

1 in 3 women report having a traumatic birth.

About 5% of women who experienced birth trauma will meet the clinical criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD, which does require an appropriately qualified healthcare professional to diagnose.

Will I know straight away if I experienced a traumatic birth?

For some women, they will identify their birth as traumatic almost immediately afterwards. For others, it’s not until months or even years later that they finally have the space to reflect and question if what happened might have actually been a traumatic experience.

After your baby is born, you might not have the capacity to process what happened. You might feel numb, overwhelmed or need to avoid thinking about birth at all. There’s nothing wrong with this, it’s self protection.

When you do get time to finally start processing what happened, you might start to realise how significant an impact it had on you and question things more.

Is birth trauma mostly about how you birthed?

A really common misconception is that birth trauma only occurs when there are significant complications or emergency situations. However, this is not true. While these things might present, your birth can be ‘textbook’ and still feel traumatic to you.  

Birth trauma is also about how you were treated, how involved you were in decision making and how in control you felt.

Many women who have experienced birth trauma describe:

• Interactions with health professionals where they felt dismissed, ignored, unsupported or where they experienced disrespectful or inappropriate comments/actions.
• Feeling like they had no control over the situation
• Feeling that their birth preferences weren’t respected
• Overwhelming, uncontrolled pain
• A lack of support from their loved ones

Why can traumatic birth be difficult to spot?

Many women experience a conflicting range of emotions after birth. This might include a mix of gratitude, love and safey as well as fear, pain and overwhelm.

It’s important to know that you may have had moments in your birth where you felt support, love and gratitude. However this does not erase the moments where you felt unsafe, afraid and overwhelmed by what was happening.

Society and the medical system have a tendency to focus on physical health of mothers, while neglecting the importance of the emotional and psychological impact of birth.

This often leaves women feeling as though they should be grateful for a healthy baby, and confused by the fear, guilt, anger, resentment and grief that also come up.

Can partners experience birth trauma too?

Yes, partners experience birth trauma too but are often forgotten.

Partners often describe feeling traumatised by witnessing their partner in pain or fearing for their life, fearing for the life of their baby, feeling powerless, being forgotten by healthcare professionals and feeling the pressure to advocate for their partner despite feeling very overwhelmed themselves.

What are the signs of birth trauma?

You might experience:

- A tightness in your chest.
- Overwhelm, grief, sadness, a sense of loss, guilt, fear, anxiety or rage.
- A sense of being on edge or unable to relax.
- Numbness and disconnection.
- Resentful and angry towards people who let you down.
- Replaying moments from your birth in your mind.
- Memories that are very vivid and others that feel hazy or missing completely.

And it keeps showing up for you in life and motherhood. This might look like:

- Worrying a lot about your baby's health and safety.
- Not feeling connected to your baby.
- Delaying having another baby or feeling fearful of giving birth again.
- Avoiding looking at pictures of the birth. 
- Feeling instantly tense when your friends start talking about birth.
- Not enjoying motherhood like you thought you would.

And wrapped up in all of this - the shame is loud.

What can I do to recover from birth trauma?

Many parents access birth debriefing as a way of processing and healing from what happened in birth. This can be done with individuals or couples.

Birth debriefing with a trained professional allows you to unpack the parts of your birth that feel distressing and overwhelming.

Often, we are able to reframe the story in a way that promotes self-compassion, healing, a sense of relief and a confidence with moving forward.

Many parents also describe that the intensity of emotions like guilt, anger, fear and grief softens after getting support.

And they feel able to reconnect with the parts of themselves that felt stuck in survival mode.

Importantly, many parents also value the impact that debriefing and counselling can have on their parenting confidence, bond with their baby and connection with their partner.

Birth debriefing can be done as a single session, however many parents will choose to come back for additional counselling sessions to get the most out of.

Is it too late?

There is no right or wrong time to access birth debriefing.

Some parents will seek support in the weeks following birth, and many others will wait months or years.

It’s never too late to talk about what happened in and after birth, and heal from your experience.

Next Steps

If you would like more information, please reach out for a chat via email: [email protected]

Or if you are ready, you can book your birth debrief with me HERE

It would be my honour to hold space for your story.