Birth Trauma
Birth Trauma can be understood as any experience of trauma, or profound and lasting distress and overwhelm, experienced by a person during the process of birthing. Birth trauma may occur during an emergency delivery, but equally may happen during a physically 'safe' birth. The important factor is the perception of the birthing person, and how they are treated at this time.
Birth matters. However it happens, it's an experience that will likely stay with a person for a long time. Many people will still feel strong emotions about their birth experience a lifetime later. For some people birth can be a wonderful experience, for others a challenging but ultimately positive life event. But for many birth has been incredibly traumatic, and has left it's scars on their emotional and psychological well-being.
Unlike other trauma or grief a person might suffer through, as a society we are reluctant to allow the experience of birth trauma to simply be what it was. If someone has experienced a different terrifying life event, such as being burgled, or assaulted, people are unlikely to encourage the victim to re-frame their experience as a good thing, they are unlikely to remind the victim of the ways in which other people benefited from their trauma. They aren't likely to make the victim feel guilty for wishing the experience had never happened, or imply that the victim was naive for not having expected this awful thing to happen to them, but these are all common experiences for people recovering from birth trauma.
There are many misunderstandings about the nuance of birth trauma, from what the trauma actually relates to, to what 'healing' from it should be like, from what feelings about it are 'acceptable' to how to respond to someone who has experienced it. The reasons for the misunderstandings are numerous, complex and nuanced. Here are some wonderful resources for those looking to further educate themselves around this topic,
Links to online rescources:
Book recommendations:
Birth trauma is something I have spent a lot of time working with others around, and have deep understanding of.
I can help you to work through this life event in therapy. Get in touch if this is a process you would like to begin.
My other areas of specialism are: Domestic Abuse, Early Parenthood, & Sexual Assault and Rape.