The ripple effects of birth trauma

Birth trauma is more than just birth trauma –

it can impact every aspect of our lives and can overshadow our mothering experience.

Maternal Mental Health

Birth trauma can steal those early days when we are supposed to be in that ‘newborn bubble’, and instead those early days are spent in survival mode. Feelings of ambivalence, hopelessness, feeling incompetent or like a failure can really cloud those early days, weeks or months. Long term this leads to a greater risk of developing postnatal depression or anxiety.

PTSD

One in ten women will go on to develop PTSD after their birth. This can look like re-experiencing through flashbacks or nightmares, avoiding certain things likely to bring up unwanted memories, hyperarousal – being quick to anger or having difficulty sleeping, and negative impacts on mood – feeling down, numb or even disassociating.

PTSD has strict criteria to meet for a true diagnosis, and many women will fall just outside of this - that’s not to say that their experience is any less harrowing.

Mother-Infant Relationship

This can look like difficulty bonding (see my previous post) or hypervigilance which is being in a constant state of fear or anxiety over baby’s health and wellbeing. This can look like constantly checking to see if baby’s breathing, not being able to sleep because of this fear or obsessively tracking baby’s feeding, sleeping and nappies. Many mothers can experience hypervigilance who have not had a traumatic birth, but it is less common.

Breastfeeding

Sometimes breastfeeding can bring on feelings of distress as it can bring up memories of birth or those early postpartum days. Some women can find that they avoid breastfeeding because of how it makes them feel, which can bring on feelings of guilt and shame, compounding the already negative feelings. For other women, breastfeeding can become something that they feel like they can do to prove themselves as mothers, or that they can to do to make up for the way their baby entered the world.

Marital/Partner Relationship

Bringing a baby into a relationship will always upset the relationship dynamics, which can be difficult to navigate – but this difficulty is often compounded by a traumatic birth. The disruption in emotional state can make it difficult to connect, and there could be feelings of hurt, anger or betrayal there too. It is also common for birth trauma to disrupt sexual function, and not always because there was physical trauma but because of the memories or feelings it brings up.

Future Reproductive Decisions

A traumatic birth can impact the decision to have another baby – some may decide not to have another leading to another type of grief altogether. Some may have a much bigger gap or fewer children than originally hoped for, and the model of care that they seek out might look very different. Quite often there is blame, distrust or anger towards healthcare professionals which can affect other areas of life as well.

Post-Trauma Growth

OK that was really heavy, wasn’t it? But there is always hope! Recovery and healing is always possible, and with that for many women can come something called post-traumatic growth. This requires both internal and external resources to build resilience so that while you can’t change what happened, you can change how you feel about it. If you can look at the you who went through that extremely difficult time with a much more compassionate lens, then that journey to resilience can move you from a place of powerlessness and voiceless to one of empowered and confident. This takes time and the right support.

Birth debriefing is a great place to start your journey to recovery and healing. Sharing your story in a safe and judgement-free space and having your feelings validated can help you to feel heard and supported, can help to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

If you would like some support in this or have any questions, please feel free to send me an email or book your session today.