Birth Trauma: How to Deal
This is about how I am healing from birth trauma as an emergency transfer from homebirth mom and a previous counselor. As you well know by now, I received my Master’s Degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling in May of 2022 and I gave birth to my daughter 3 weeks after I graduated. Throughout my schooling, my main area of interest was birth trauma. Every project that we were able to choose our own topic for, I chose birth trauma. This was true in my Group Counseling class, where I wrote this very relevant excerpt:
“While many consider birth a beautiful topic- it is not always “beautiful” to those who experience it. Childbirth trauma is becoming a persistent issue within our culture and it normally occurs when a woman “feels the loss of her dignity due to childbirth or perceives severe threat or risk of death toward herself or her child” (Hajarian Abhari, Karimi, Taghizdeh, Mazloum, & Asghari Nekah, 2020). In fact, de Graaf, Honig, van Pampus, & Stramrood (2018) state that anywhere between 9 to 44% of women report their birth as being “traumatic” and that at least 3% of these women will develop some form of post-traumatic stress disorder because of their birthing experience.”
Ironically, I didn’t know that I would become one of those statistics. But, I did. If you missed my post about my daughter’s birth story, you can read my first homebirth story here. Like I said in a previous blog post, I truly believe that we are placed in certain situations for a reason. I believe one of the main reasons that I was dealt this hand, was to help other women who are/were also traumatized by their birthing experience.
In this post, I will cover how I, personally, navigated my birth trauma.
[DISCLAIMER]: Keep in mind I am not a doctor and this is NOT medical advice. This post may contain affiliate links meaning I may earn a commission, at no extra cost to you, if you make a purchase using these links. I only recommend products I love and trust. To see our full disclosure, click here.
How I Am Healing from Birth Trauma
I Talked About My Experience
Everyone responds to trauma differently- some people like to talk and others don’t. Clearly, I like to talk. Literally from the day we wound up at the hospital to this day, I have spoken about my experience and told my story. When my friends texted me or visited me, I would tell them exactly what happened to me. I discussed it with my Midwife and my Doula at my follow up appointments, too.
I don’t know if people realize this, but seeing a counselor is normally “talk therapy”. You’re just talking, getting your thoughts and feelings out in the open. Talking to a friend or family member can also be enlightening and therapeutic. Don’t get me wrong, I did see a counselor after my birth experience and still see her to this day. However, it took me a while to go and see my counselor, so speaking openly about my experience to those who would listen helped me a lot in the meantime.
I also, obviously, wrote my blog and shared it to everyone on my social media. Nearly 500 people have read my birth story now and the number grows every day. I have multiple people reach out to me every week to talk about their experiences with birth trauma as well. I love it. I love having a community of women that can openly talk about their struggles during the most vulnerable time of our lives and processing it together.
I Saw a Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist
This part is probably going to be graphic to some, but YOLO. After my birth experience, I think my episiotomy healing was the worst part. I am not exaggerating when I say that I thought I would never be the same physically, which weighed heavily on me mentally.
First of all, I was stitched up for nearly an hour after I delivered Libby. So, ya know that there was A LOT going on down south. And let me tell ya, I felt every damn stitch for weeks after I had her. Sitting on the couch? Yep. Lifting Libby up? Yep. Peeing or pooping? OH HELL YEAH- wanna talk about TERROR? There’s NOTHING that prepares you for the first bowel movement after delivery, but I digress.
The moral of the story: my vagina hurt. Now, I have a new found respect for any woman who, after 6 weeks of delivery, feels frisky enough to get it on with their spouse. The thought of doing that, for me, made me want to throw up. I did not want Erik to touch me at all. 6 weeks passed. Then 8. Then nearly 10 weeks passed and I finally thought I’d give it the ole’ big girl try. I am not exaggerating when I say that that experience was more painful than pushing a human being out of my body, unmedicated. No joke.
This experience made me panic. I don’t want to be in a marriage where I can’t be affectionate with my husband. Nope. Not gonna happen. So, I made an appointment at the Pelvic Floor Physical Therapist. I loved my therapist- she was truly amazing. One day I am going to write about my experience at the PT in thorough detail, but for now, I will just say: we did a lot of scar desensitization. Sounds simple, but it hurt so bad. Wanna talk about sweat? I’d leave that place looking like I ran a damn marathon. BUT it worked. I no longer have pain when I have intercourse and I don’t pee on myself. Win, win.
I Had Emotional Support
That statistic I mentioned above about 44% of women experiencing birth trauma is most likely wrong, in my opinion. I know a lot of women that have experienced birth trauma, so I’d venture to say it is much higher. Whether it be an emergency c-section, being spoken to like a dog by their provider or receiving an episiotomy against consent- I have met a lot of women with traumatic birth experiences.
It sounds horrible to say this, but I am lucky to have had one of my very closest friends also have a traumatic birth experience. Nikki wrote about her daughter’s birth on her blog. If you read her blog, you’ll recognize that we have a lot of things that paralleled in our birth experience- the greatest one being we were “failed homebirthers”. What a dumb term. Anywho, Nikki gave birth 3 years prior to me, so she had a lot of time to process her experience and give me guidance, which I am forever grateful for. Even to this day, I will have thoughts or feelings that make me feel like an ass hole for even thinking and I will talk to Nikki about it. Ya know why? Because she gets it. She understands the disappointment. She understands when I am throwing an “it’s just not fair” party for myself. She understands what might trigger me. Because she has been there. I am lucky to have her to navigate this with and I think about that almost every day.
In my birth story, I mentioned how amazing my husband was as a birth partner. He was. He’s the bomb in general, but in that instance- he was especially amazing. After I had Libby, I never once considered how he felt in that entire experience. From the get go, he was especially fragile with me because he saw the trauma within me probably before I even saw it in myself. He always gave me time to decompress and sit with my emotions. I cannot tell you how many times I sat in my bath tub and cried after I gave birth to my daughter. He knew I needed that and he encouraged me to take time for myself without ever prying or saying things like "yo, why you crying in the bath tub so much?"
After a few weeks passed, we finally discussed how he felt about our birth experience. Come to find out, if I wasn’t being so self-absorbed, I would’ve realized that Erik was traumatized by that experience, too. Hearing him express his feelings and concerns about that day was actually very enlightening to me and it helped me process my experience even more. We talked specifically about how Erik was scared that Libby was dead when she was born because she “was so quiet and flopped out like a fish”. Those words put my experience in a totally different perspective for me: this was an emergency situation. Before he told me that, I thought I’d just… failed. Now, I don’t feel like a failure.
Erik and I are pretty great at communicating in general (I know, major eye roll), so this was relatively easy for us to do together. If you have trouble communicating with your spouse, I encourage you to have this hard conversation because it could give you a perspective that you may be lacking. I also encourage you to reach out to your friends, especially if they’ve had a similar experience as you.
I Go to Counseling
Despite my education, I was reluctant to go to therapy. Talking about my feelings is hard, as it is for most people. Honestly, I put off going until Libby was about 9 months old. I knew I had birth trauma, but it was bearable other than the occasional cry fest when someone posted their *MaGiCaL* birth experience.
Then, one day, Erik and I were watching a show on Netflix. This show was about a notorious cult leader and was very entertaining to watch until a birth scene came up and I began to feel a knot in the pit of my stomach. As the scene progressed, the cult leader literally begins to give the actress an episiotomy. Then, I was done- that’s all I remember. I “came to” after a few minutes and I was balled up on the couch with my eyes squeezed shut, tears streaming down my face and my hands over my ears like I was a child. I felt like a crazy person. If I didn’t have my education background, I wouldn’t have recognized that this is a trauma response and a pretty severe reaction to a stimulus.
Counseling is an ongoing experience for me currently. I learned a lot about counseling techniques when I was in school, so I knew I wanted to see a counselor that specialized in EMDR. EMDR is an acronym for Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. Honestly, I thought it sounded like a bunch of bull crap. In fact, Nikki first brought it up to me and I remember reading about it and thinking “what a joke”. However, I then read a book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk and I was sold. This guy was actually who discovered PTSD and figured out this method of how to effectively treat it.
My first session with my counselor was about her getting to know me and why I was seeking counseling services. My next visit was beginning the EMDR portion. It seems so simple to say, and there is definitely more to it than this, but here is basically how our EMDR sessions have looked so far:
She’d have me pinpoint physical sensations (somatic) I experienced when speaking or thinking about a particular word that my birth story elicited for me. I would have a knot in my stomach and feeling like I was choking in the back of my throat.
She then had me think of a place where I am happiest and give a word to describe it. My word was “water” and the place is a place Erik and I always walk to throughout the week. It is calm and peaceful and it’s my favorite place on earth.
She’d then have me watch her move her finger back and forth as I thought about my a particular thought or word regarding my birth experience. Then, she’d ask me where my mind went. Sometimes my mind wouldn’t go anywhere- I wouldn’t be thinking. Other times I’d think about other parts of my birth experience. She’d have me note if I felt any somatic responses to my thoughts, too.
Throughout, we always are processing how I felt physically and where my mind went and potentially why my mind went there. It’s been enlightening for me and this technique has helped me IMMENSLEY so far. I no longer have my heightened emotional responses to my birth story and I haven’t had an involuntary trauma response since. I cannot wait to continue this treatment and see the benefits.
There you have it- how I have been navigating birth trauma for over 2 years. If you’re navigating birth trauma, I’d love to hear how you’re navigating it, too! There’s no right or wrong and we can all empower each other to heal!