Was My Birth Traumatic? - Birth Trauma Awareness Week

This week marks Birth Trauma Awareness week 2020, and certainly over the past 6 months of lockdown I imagine there has been a significant increase in the number of women who question ‘was my birth experience traumatic?’

I know that our HCPs, Midwives and NHS has been doing the best they can to make women feel safe and well cared for through pregnancy, birth and the early postnatal period during this global pandemic. However with many birth professionals campaigning through the hashtag #ButNotInMaternity to see improvements and regional continuity within the guidelines related to labouring women. Thanks to those who signed and shared the petition for partners to be allowed attendance throughout birth, inductions and at scans, the issue is now to be debated in parliament.

However it has been too little too late for many as only this week have the two leading Royal Colleges called the delay by NHS England in publishing guidance on partners attending births, scans and other ante- and postnatal appointments as ‘unacceptable’.

The Royal College of Midwives (RCM) and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) say this is not only causing confusion, but undue stress for pregnant women and their families. You can read their report here.

Already before COVID-19 the UK was reporting that 30% of parents describing their birth experience as traumatic, however a more recent commission from Birthrights and Mumsnet has reported 1/4 of women saying their decisions weren’t respected during childbirth.

Considering your birth experience as unimportant as long as “mother and baby are all in one piece” is antiquated in so many ways. In what other field would it be socially acceptable to have a bare minimum outcome as the measure by which we hold ourselves against?

Why are women being gaslighted into questioning themselves “was it really that bad? It’s all over now so best to avoid over-analysing it”. Why have we socially conditioned women to think of birth as being difficult, painful and best not discussed afterwards.

As Alex Heath from Traumatic Birth Recovery questioned “do we as society excuse birth trauma a bit?” And more importantly, is that not the beginning of the end to any progress that can be made towards healing a bad birth for many parents?

Should women not make a fuss? Should we as friends and family not ask how they are? Should we not hold our birthing women in a higher level of regard other than focusing our pride and affection around meeting and holding the new baby?

Who his holding the mother? Who is supporting the father? Are they not entitled to help and support? Must they be made to feel happy and grateful? Are they not entitled to broader feelings within the spectrum?

Traumatic events during the perinatal window may (sadly) be common, but that doesn’t make it ok.

If we can’t transform our services and care fast enough (due to staffing / funding / culture) should we not at least be offering parents the help and support they need to move on with a happy and healthy mind as well as body? Aren’t the early days, weeks and months of parenthood hard enough without the added challenge of dealing with heavy feelings, sadness, triggers to flashbacks, panic attacks, anxiety and upsetting thoughts.

If the word Trauma feels too much for you, but you are still experiencing the impact of a difficult event then perhaps you would benefit from some support to change that.

If an event that happened in the past, during your perinatal experience, is still causing you upset when you think about it, then perhaps it has left an emotional mark. Perhaps that event was difficult at least, and traumatic at worst; but either way - if you yourself can identify ways in which that difficult past event (birth/ a difficult IVF journey/ miscarriage/ breastfeeding) still continues to impact your day to day life, whether it be your feelings, responses, thoughts and behaviours, then there is something that can be done to reduce and even remove these unhelpful responses which are impacting your life.

It really doesn’t matter whether you associate with the label TRAUMA or not. There has been a neurological pathway built int your brain in response to an event, which can still be triggered into producing unhelpful and upsetting feelings which are detrimental to you now. Your brain is a very clever organ and it remembers the feelings from the event and attaches them to the memory of the event.

To carry these heavy and upsetting thoughts and feelings into parenthood can impact the bonding and nurturing you experience in the early stages. Everything in turn can become much harder and the sense of shame and guilt many mothers experience around these feelings can push them towards postnatal depression.

So the purpose of Birth Trauma Awareness Week is to reach out to people, and reassure them that something can be done. You no longer have to sit with these thoughts and feelings of a difficult experience. Recovering from a perinatal trauma can be done very gently and quite quickly through talking with a qualified birth professional offering a type of hypnotherapy called 3-Step Rewind. Rewind perinatal trauma therapy is offered by many practitioners across the country, and currently remotely across the UK with me at MAMBA UK.

To find out more, and get support please reach out.

Contact Nicola at MAMBA UK here, or find other qualified TBR practitioners via the directory.