birth trauma
When childbirth doesn’t go the way you planned, it’s common to feel a deep sense of loss. Your delivery experience may have been everything you hoped to avoid. Maybe you experienced medical intervention that felt frightening and unwanted. Your baby arrived early or very quickly and your entire birth plan feels like a distant memory. Or your baby experienced a NICU stay, breathing, or feeding difficulties. It’s possible you felt misunderstood or invalidated by your providers. You may have felt afraid for your life, your partner’s life, or your baby’s life during your delivery. Or experienced the devastating loss of your baby. All of these experiences bring unique pain and can be traumatic in different ways.
Even now that your birth is in the past, you might find yourself dealing with grief, disappointment, anger, shame, fear, and many other emotions. You might find yourself thinking, “At least I….” or “At least my baby is….”
There is no “right” way to define a traumatic birth. If your birth experience felt distressing to you, that matters. Your experience is uniquely yours and your feelings about your birth are valid and important. And you deserve to process all of it in a safe, supportive space.