What is a Healing Birth?

Healing Birth can mean many things

Birth, as it stands within the current maternity health care system, is a mess. What is supposed to be such a deeply transformative experience for a woman to mark a rite of passage as she leaves her maiden years behind and enters into motherhood, has been taken over by an institution telling women what they can and can’t do with their own bodies.

One in three women are experiencing birth trauma. This number is huge. Why isn’t there a bigger, louder outcry? Why isn’t there an investigation?

The rate of intervention – of instruments, inductions and surgery has done absolutely nothing to decrease the rate of infant mortality (infant and neonatal death) and instead is probably, mostly responsible for the ridiculously high rate of birth trauma.

I say probably, mostly responsible because the rest of the trauma is mostly from direct interactions with a caregiver – i.e. from midwife or obstetrician mistreatment, either verbally, emotionally or physically. The last cause of birth trauma would be from unavoidable obstetric emergencies.

So that is where birth, for the vast majority of the population, currently stands.

Healing Birth, for me personally, means two things. Healing Birth on an individual level, and Healing Birth on a collective level.

Healing Birth on an individual level

This is also split into two parts. Healing birth on an individual level first of all means to heal the disconnect within after a traumatic birth. This looks different for everyone as birth trauma is felt differently by each individual woman who experiences it. The feelings left behind however – the emotional injury after the traumatic event, will always leave loose threads within the nervous system and the body.

Healing after birth trauma means unravelling and tying up those loose threads. Leaving the big emotions in the past, so that they don’t continue to trip you up on a daily basis.

This again looks different for everyone but the way to do this includes some form of debriefing and/or talk therapy, reflective practices such as journaling or meditation, and some form of somatic therapy to help resolve those big feelings within the body – for example breathwork, EMDR, intentional movement like yoga, Timeline Reset even yoni mapping or womb massage.

Everyone’s journey to healing looks different and only you can know what is going to resonate and work for you.

Healing Birth at an individual can also mean to have a Healing Birth.

Having a Healing Birth for a woman generally comes after a traumatic birth, where she has done the work required to achieve a birth where she feels the opposite of her last birth. For whatever that means to her. Empowered. Supported. Autonomous. Heard. Seen. Trusting of self and/or others and being trusted by those around her. Whatever it was you didn’t have or felt like it was taken from her in her previous traumatic birth, she works hard to be able to achieve the opposite in her next birth.

She has worked through and resolved any ongoing threads left behind from her previous birth (in whatever way that felt right for her) knowing that if left unresolved, those threads can trip her up in her next birth.

If a previous birth has not been addressed, it may not be that those threads trip you up during birth. It may be that when the dust settles after a redemptive birth, the stark contrast from what was during her Healing Birth compared to what could have been in her first birth, becomes glaringly obvious. This can then cause those unresolved threads to become activated again.

To achieve her Healing Birth she has called in the support that she knows will trust her to be take the lead in her birth and will be there for her, and has set up an environment in which she feels the safest to birth in.

She knows that there is always an element of the wild and unpredictable when it comes to birth, but she feels safe knowing that she has prepared for all outcomes.

For some, this might look like a homebirth with (or without) a midwife and a doula. For others, this may look like an elective caesarean.

It doesn’t matter what it looks like, as long as she feels empowered to make the decisions that are right for her.

And she births on her terms.

Healing Birth on a collective level

The next aspect of Healing Birth comes at a collective level.

This means that all women have access to the type of care that they feel safest with. That they all get a complete education on all options available to them across all aspects of birth, so that they can make choices that are appropriate and aligned for them.

That they all get support to work through any fears and beliefs about birth, and to process any past traumas that have unresolved threads stored within their body that might trip them up when they are at their most vulnerable.

That all women are all supported to be the lead in their own births.

That they are respected in all ways – their decisions and requests are respected and they are spoken to, touched and treated with respect.

That all women are supported to trust their body and are supported in making decisions for what happens to their own bodies.

That all women feel safe enough to be vulnerable in their environment so they access the parts of their brain required to let the birthing process flow.

This also means that the widely accepted narrative that birth is something to fear also changes. That birth comes back into the place of reverence where is once was - a deeply revered initiation and rite of passage, and that it is widely understood that no woman who enters into the birth portal emerges the same person that she was before. That she has grown in the most expansive of ways and her journey through matrescence exploring this is respected and supported.

This is, in my personal opinion on what Healing Birth means, in all of its aspects.