“To me, an ideal birth is simply one where all involved respect the sacredness of what is unfolding and where the mother’s experience is a felt sense of agency and respect throughout the process, no matter how things actually go down.”
I love this quote. All birth care providers should have to read some of these types of stores.
Really appreciated this read and Amber’s candor about an experience that is seemingly common in our modern maternity landscape. As a postpartum nurse it is always illuminating to take in the myriad experiences of other women in birth and postpartum and a good reminder to be extra aware of how I move through these experiences with the women I care for in those early hours after birth, no matter how it went.
This is such an important topic! Thank you, Amber, for sharing your experience, and Katrina for providing space. Even though my first two births were fairly unproblematic, there were elements that I did not fully process until the birth of my third, which was a home birth, where I felt deeply respected and cared for by my midwives. That healing experience showed me the ways in which I had dissociated (to a lesser degree than Amber) during my previous births because I did not feel as safe. I appreciated Amber’s point that there are ways in which a woman can be affected by birth that she is not even fully aware of until much later!
Thank you, Alexa, for reading and sharing about your birth experience. I'm so glad you had a redemptive one with your third. Yes, as a collective, our birth experiences run the gamut, but I do feel that there is a great deal of commonality, unfortunately, surrounding the topic of being respected by the people who are caring for you in that pivotal life moment. It's a lot to process, but I think we can all benefit from the telling of our stories. As you said, sharing our stories provides the opportunity for us to process things that we maybe weren't fully aware of.
Thanks for reading. I too had a homebirth for my third and it was very healing. I was absolutely centered and given the utmost regard throughout the process!
Hey -- for my birth trauma, I did whatever I could to take back my power that I lost in the hospital.
including --
--therapy and psychiatry (one of the high blood pressure meds I was on for preeclampsia quickly depletes dopamine, so that was scary ...it's called methyldopa.)
--I became a patient advisor for the Preeclampsia Foundation
--I ordered all my medical records to see their version of "what happened." This wasn't fun to read but it did help me understand how the medical system functions, and often fails. I also learned they never looked at mother and baby as one unit. My daughter's NICU records had no mention of my medical crisis and how it caused her crisis, for example.
--I interviewed experts for a magazine article -- this helped me funnel my anger (if you feel safe revisiting your experience, I think there's a possible story to pitch about the pressure to get a c-section in that setting, esp during covid...)
--I continue to do expressive writing about it. I have a creative nonfiction piece coming out in the literary journal West Trade Review this month about postpartum sleep deprivation and how that affected my mental health and worsened my PTSD (titled "White Knuckling.")
--I explored the other factors in my life that contributed to my PTSD, especially my mother's severe mental illness.
Hope this helps! There is so much that needs to be done to improve maternal healthcare. I first wrote about it a decade ago.
I do write freelance actually but have never pitched anything about birth. I think that's because I haven't gotten the sense that publications want to hear about birth trauma. It's such a niche thing, it seems like (even though it's so common). It's like it doesn't fit neatly with any narrative/worldview. It really lands for me that writing more about it will help further the healing!
Yes—give me a day or two to dig up what helped me. (I wrote an article in Cosmo in 2015 about our shitty maternal healthcare system. That’s partly how I processed my birth trauma. Revenge writing!)
Thank you for sharing your experiences Amber and for providing such a thoughtful platform for these conversations Katrina. There's still plenty to be done in the trauma research field (not to mention how the concept of "trauma" is somehow becoming more and more politicised). But we do know that PTSD is more likely to develop when (1) the person experiences dehumanisation during the event, (2) the person feels powerless or frozen during the event, and (3) there is no safe, sane, thoughtful place for them to speak about their experiences with someone they trust to help them make sense of what happened at a pace and in a way that is right for them.
This piece highlights all three of those factors, and is a powerful demonstration of how something becomes traumatising when it need not have been so. Having an unplanned C-section is intense, upsetting and frightening. But if you are treated with dignity and care, when people explain to you what is happening to you and why, talk you through the process, are patient with your fears, validate your feelings and treat you like a person not a bag of organs, that matters. When you have someone who can be with you emotionally in the days and weeks afterwards, and just listen to you and care for you, that matters too. I wish everyone was able to have that.
Thank you for sharing your expertise and wisdom on trauma, Skye! I certainly agree with you here. I’ve been thinking about my own birth experiences this week and how fortunate I was to have a mostly positive/supportive care team. For me, trauma entered the picture due to the COVID lockdown in NYC. I had my first child in April of 2020, a month after the city basically closed. I’m still unpacking things, nearly five years later, and I hope to share more of my story at the end of the month. Thanks again for reading and commenting! :)
I've been working on a series about the 'risk:risk' analysis in the pregnancy->birth->postpartum care journey. Mostly how the very real risk of STRESS exposure to mothers is completely ignored when any, tiny, itty-bitty potential risk to the baby is present (or seems like a remote possibility). Birth experience is a huge one here. The emotional experience and physical wellbeing of the mother is usually completely disregarded while the baby is overprioritized.
C-sections to "save the baby" are often overblown and over-utilized as an excuse to dehumanize and cut women open.
Acceptable risk to baby = zero.
Acceptable risk to mother = .... (seems to follow the pattern of if it's not something medical staff can get in trouble for, who gives a shit 😒)
100% agree with almost everything you said here. However, I am someone who *should* have had a c-section but did not. My midwife dismissed my high blood pressure and pulse as “anxiety” and sent me back home to keep laboring. In reality, It was severe preeclampsia that went into to HELLP and affected me and baby, who was born in respiratory distress after two days of hellish labor.
Oh my goodness. Thanks for sharing this good (and scary) example of the other side of all of this.
There is absolutely a line to walk here. C-sections are LIFE SAVING, absolutely critical in about 10-12% of births. But our US C-section rate is well over 20%. So we need to do a better job of reducing *unecessary* c-sections but we also need to recognize when c-sections, in cases like yours, are medically necessary.
The middle line here -- CENTER THE MOTHER. Center her health and her experience and her own expertise in her body. That still might lead to C-section but it could buffer the effects of the stress if communication is handled in a respectful way.
(also, high blood pressure during labor should never be dismissed. Especially as "anxiety"! I am outraged for you!)
“To me, an ideal birth is simply one where all involved respect the sacredness of what is unfolding and where the mother’s experience is a felt sense of agency and respect throughout the process, no matter how things actually go down.”
I love this quote. All birth care providers should have to read some of these types of stores.
That's a great idea! 💯!
Really appreciated this read and Amber’s candor about an experience that is seemingly common in our modern maternity landscape. As a postpartum nurse it is always illuminating to take in the myriad experiences of other women in birth and postpartum and a good reminder to be extra aware of how I move through these experiences with the women I care for in those early hours after birth, no matter how it went.
This is such an important topic! Thank you, Amber, for sharing your experience, and Katrina for providing space. Even though my first two births were fairly unproblematic, there were elements that I did not fully process until the birth of my third, which was a home birth, where I felt deeply respected and cared for by my midwives. That healing experience showed me the ways in which I had dissociated (to a lesser degree than Amber) during my previous births because I did not feel as safe. I appreciated Amber’s point that there are ways in which a woman can be affected by birth that she is not even fully aware of until much later!
Thank you, Alexa, for reading and sharing about your birth experience. I'm so glad you had a redemptive one with your third. Yes, as a collective, our birth experiences run the gamut, but I do feel that there is a great deal of commonality, unfortunately, surrounding the topic of being respected by the people who are caring for you in that pivotal life moment. It's a lot to process, but I think we can all benefit from the telling of our stories. As you said, sharing our stories provides the opportunity for us to process things that we maybe weren't fully aware of.
Thanks for reading. I too had a homebirth for my third and it was very healing. I was absolutely centered and given the utmost regard throughout the process!
Such an important topic. No doubt this is PTSD territory.
Recommendations? A friend of mine has recommended Brainspotting. Though I’m doing well generally I definitely still could use support.
Hey -- for my birth trauma, I did whatever I could to take back my power that I lost in the hospital.
including --
--therapy and psychiatry (one of the high blood pressure meds I was on for preeclampsia quickly depletes dopamine, so that was scary ...it's called methyldopa.)
--I became a patient advisor for the Preeclampsia Foundation
--I ordered all my medical records to see their version of "what happened." This wasn't fun to read but it did help me understand how the medical system functions, and often fails. I also learned they never looked at mother and baby as one unit. My daughter's NICU records had no mention of my medical crisis and how it caused her crisis, for example.
--I interviewed experts for a magazine article -- this helped me funnel my anger (if you feel safe revisiting your experience, I think there's a possible story to pitch about the pressure to get a c-section in that setting, esp during covid...)
--I continue to do expressive writing about it. I have a creative nonfiction piece coming out in the literary journal West Trade Review this month about postpartum sleep deprivation and how that affected my mental health and worsened my PTSD (titled "White Knuckling.")
--I explored the other factors in my life that contributed to my PTSD, especially my mother's severe mental illness.
Hope this helps! There is so much that needs to be done to improve maternal healthcare. I first wrote about it a decade ago.
Love this. Thank you for sharing.
I do write freelance actually but have never pitched anything about birth. I think that's because I haven't gotten the sense that publications want to hear about birth trauma. It's such a niche thing, it seems like (even though it's so common). It's like it doesn't fit neatly with any narrative/worldview. It really lands for me that writing more about it will help further the healing!
Yes—give me a day or two to dig up what helped me. (I wrote an article in Cosmo in 2015 about our shitty maternal healthcare system. That’s partly how I processed my birth trauma. Revenge writing!)
Thank you for sharing your experiences Amber and for providing such a thoughtful platform for these conversations Katrina. There's still plenty to be done in the trauma research field (not to mention how the concept of "trauma" is somehow becoming more and more politicised). But we do know that PTSD is more likely to develop when (1) the person experiences dehumanisation during the event, (2) the person feels powerless or frozen during the event, and (3) there is no safe, sane, thoughtful place for them to speak about their experiences with someone they trust to help them make sense of what happened at a pace and in a way that is right for them.
This piece highlights all three of those factors, and is a powerful demonstration of how something becomes traumatising when it need not have been so. Having an unplanned C-section is intense, upsetting and frightening. But if you are treated with dignity and care, when people explain to you what is happening to you and why, talk you through the process, are patient with your fears, validate your feelings and treat you like a person not a bag of organs, that matters. When you have someone who can be with you emotionally in the days and weeks afterwards, and just listen to you and care for you, that matters too. I wish everyone was able to have that.
Thank you for sharing your expertise and wisdom on trauma, Skye! I certainly agree with you here. I’ve been thinking about my own birth experiences this week and how fortunate I was to have a mostly positive/supportive care team. For me, trauma entered the picture due to the COVID lockdown in NYC. I had my first child in April of 2020, a month after the city basically closed. I’m still unpacking things, nearly five years later, and I hope to share more of my story at the end of the month. Thanks again for reading and commenting! :)
Yes yes yes to all you’ve said. I haven’t read much about PTSD and would be open to anything you’d want to share! Feel free to DM
Wow. Thank you for sharing this story, Amber!
I've been working on a series about the 'risk:risk' analysis in the pregnancy->birth->postpartum care journey. Mostly how the very real risk of STRESS exposure to mothers is completely ignored when any, tiny, itty-bitty potential risk to the baby is present (or seems like a remote possibility). Birth experience is a huge one here. The emotional experience and physical wellbeing of the mother is usually completely disregarded while the baby is overprioritized.
C-sections to "save the baby" are often overblown and over-utilized as an excuse to dehumanize and cut women open.
Acceptable risk to baby = zero.
Acceptable risk to mother = .... (seems to follow the pattern of if it's not something medical staff can get in trouble for, who gives a shit 😒)
100% agree with almost everything you said here. However, I am someone who *should* have had a c-section but did not. My midwife dismissed my high blood pressure and pulse as “anxiety” and sent me back home to keep laboring. In reality, It was severe preeclampsia that went into to HELLP and affected me and baby, who was born in respiratory distress after two days of hellish labor.
Oh my goodness. Thanks for sharing this good (and scary) example of the other side of all of this.
There is absolutely a line to walk here. C-sections are LIFE SAVING, absolutely critical in about 10-12% of births. But our US C-section rate is well over 20%. So we need to do a better job of reducing *unecessary* c-sections but we also need to recognize when c-sections, in cases like yours, are medically necessary.
The middle line here -- CENTER THE MOTHER. Center her health and her experience and her own expertise in her body. That still might lead to C-section but it could buffer the effects of the stress if communication is handled in a respectful way.
(also, high blood pressure during labor should never be dismissed. Especially as "anxiety"! I am outraged for you!)
CENTER THE MOTHER. Let’s get it on a t-shirt.
Thanks for reading and engaging here Molly💕