Birth Trauma is in the Eye of the Beholder
Did I experience birth trauma?
If you are asking yourself, “Did I experience birth trauma,” you are not alone. Many women experience birth trauma and many women question whether or not what they experienced was birth trauma. Was it enough to qualify? Maybe they heard that someone had it “worse” than they did. Particularly if their child does not have any acute or lingering challenges after birth, women tend to question themselves and if what they experienced was enough to qualify as trauma. Sometimes, other family or friends who mean well may invalidate birth trauma by pointing out how everyone is “OK now.” This leads to invalidating and dismissing what happened, and often, it leads to mom not getting the treatment she needs. Here is something you need to know: Birth trauma happens frequently, it is highly treatable, and there is help available.
One definition of birth trauma is an event occurring during the labor and delivery process that involves actual or threatened serious injury or death to the mother and her infant. The birthing woman experiences intense fear, helplessness, loss of control, and horror (Pop-Jordanova, 2022). Trauma is a subjective experience caused by events directly or indirectly related to childbirth, which is manifested as intertwined painful emotional experiences that originate in the birth process and last until postpartum (Sun et al., 2023). It has a wide range of negative and, in some cases, positive effects on women. Different studies show prevalence rates of birth trauma between 20-68% and at least 4% of women experience PTSD from childbirth.
The experience of motherhood is not black and white, it is complex and multilayered. You may experience both joy and sadness at the birth of your child. In fact, many parents we work with (yes, dads too…more on that below!) feel extremely happy and lucky and also deeply distressed from the experience.
Dads can have birth trauma, too
Fathers also experience birth trauma - in fact, at least 1 in 10 dads experience perinatal mental health issues, and about 1% of dads get PTSD from witnessing their partner’s traumatic birth. Often, it is less expected in dads and may go untreated for years
What birth trauma may look like:
Increased alcohol or drug use to numb the experience
Outbursts of anger and rage at seemingly unrelated events
Hypervigilance - watching the children (or other things) like a hawk
Intrusive thoughts - memories or thoughts of the birth you don’t want to remember
Avoidance of people, places, or things that remind you of the trauma
What does treatment for birth trauma look like?
There are many research-backed methods of working with birth trauma. Some useful treatments that we offer at The Centered Space Psychology Group include relational psychodynamic therapy, CBT, interpersonal psychotherapy, somatic therapy (including EMDR), and couples and family therapy. What these therapies have in common are ways to add new layers of understanding to the situation, to soothe the nervous system, and potentially to process the traumatic experience in a trusting environment, where you can allow the brain to reprocess the experience and promote healing.
With birth trauma, healing is a process, not a destination. It is being at peace with your experience and holding multiple truths about your experience. Through storytelling, holding space, and many other techniques - including EMDR - we can get unstuck from these overwhelming and distressing events and grow into our lives.
Pop-Jordanova N. (2022). Childbirth-Related Psychological Trauma. Prilozi (Makedonska akademija na naukite i umetnostite. Oddelenie za medicinski nauki), 43(1), 17–27. https://doi.org/10.2478/prilozi-2022-0002
Sun, X., Fan, X., Cong, S., Wang, R., Sha, L., Xie, H., ... & Zhang, A. (2023). Psychological birth trauma: A concept analysis. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1065612.