Joyful Families

In almost every blog I’ve written over the last 14 years (except maybe the food one) I’ve had a post titled “Your Feelings Matter”. Every time, without fail, that post has been the most read from week to week and over the years.

If you are fed up with being told to not dwell on it, or not worry about it because “you and your baby are fine now and that’s what’s most important” you are not alone and you’re not wrong to feel that way.

Was it really a “bad” birth experience?

If it felt bad for you then yes it was, regardless of what anyone else says or thinks.

So often birth stories that make us feel sad can’t be predicted by what happened. How YOU feel looking back on your birth story is what makes it a traumatic experience for you. How you feel can be affected by so many things. There are objective things that other people might expect to cause you to feel sad or angry about your birth, like if you had an emergency cesarean or a significant blood loss or if your baby needed to be resuscitated. But those things happening may or may not leave you feeling traumatised depending on how you were cared for at the time.

The things that come up most often when we ask people why was their birth experience traumatic for them are how they were spoken to and whether or not they were treated with respect. This means that a birth that on paper may seem like it was really fine or lovely might have left you feeling very far from fine and lovely.

A lot of people wouldn’t identify themselves as having had a traumatic experience because that’s often associated with wartime experiences or being the victim of a serious assault etc. But if you start to look at trauma as how your brain has been affected by the things that happened to you -trauma is affecting a lot of people who don’t realise that’s what it is.

So how I feel might be a symptom of a traumatic birth experience?

Lots of trauma symptoms are easily dismissed as just being an anxious new parent. But if you’re finding it difficult to ever relax and enjoy being a new parent it is possible you’re experiencing a totally normal and natural (but not inevitably forever) response to having been through a traumatic experience.

Some of the things you might be experiencing include:

• Having nightmares about what happened.
• Being angry with yourself/your partner/your midwife for allowing it to happen.
• Not being able to bear seeing or hearing any reminders of what happened.
• Thinking about what happened all the time and feeling upset.
• Feeling guilty about what your baby went through and worrying if they are okay all the time.
• Being/Feeling hypervigilant about your health and/or your baby’s health and well-being.
• Avoiding people who might ask questions about your pregnancy, birth or postnatal experiences.
• Feeling like you could never have another baby when you used to want to have more than one.
• Avoiding the hospital or anywhere that reminds you what happened.
• Feeling emotional, crying, feeling angry or overwhelmed when anyone else tells their birth story.

Is there anything I can do to feel better?

The good news is, yes, there are lots of things that will help you feel better.

If you only had your baby very recently you may well find that as you process your feelings, talk about them openly with your loved ones (assuming they are prepared to listen without trying to fix or dismiss how you feel) and talk gently and encouragingly to yourself you may start to file those events in your long term memory and allow the feelings to fade into memory also. If you don’t have a trusted friend or family member to do this with (or you do but would also like an outside perspective) please drop me a message and arrange a birth story listening session.

You might find the birth story writing exercise described in this blog I wrote for IPBB really helpful.

Some people also find that a “Birth Afterthoughts” session at their hospital can be helpful with finding out exactly what happened to them and why. Speak to your midwife or call the hospital you birthed in for more details. Another option that you may want to consider is passing on your feedback about what happened to you via your hospital’s Patient Advisory Liason Service (PALS) details will be on your hospital trust’s website. If you would like more support with either of these things please feel free to get in touch with me.

If it’s been more than a couple of months and you’re still struggling with the memories a trauma-informed listening session or using the TBR Three-Step-Rewind method may help you to move on and imagine feeling more positive in the future. Check out the details here.

If you’re really struggling with your day-to-day life and feel like you’re never really happy or enjoying parenting or that you’re anxious about everything all the time you might need to have a chat with your GP or refer yourself to one of the local NHS talking therapy services such as https://www.talkingtherapieshiow.nhs.uk/hampshire

Sometimes trauma symptoms reach a level that can be diagnosed as PTSD which may sound scary but just means that a higher level of support is available and may be useful to you. One of the therapies that may be available and has been shown to be very effective is EMDR https://www.bacp.co.uk/about-therapy/types-of-therapy/eye-movement-desensitisation-and-reprocessing-emdr

A really good source for more information about birth trauma and the support available is Make Birth Better.