The Relearning Blog

When you think of the birth of life you think of the golden hour, of skin to skin contact between parent and child, of tired yet joyous parents. Trauma during birth or “birth trauma” steals those moments. Steals  hope and preconceived beauty from you and replaces it with panic, terror and disassociation.

My daughter was born November 15, 2022 in an emergency c-section after a medical error. The medical team didn’t call it an error, but it was. After the birth I vaguely remember social workers, patient advocates (or something similar) coming to visit. I had a number of cards of people to call to discuss my experience and also give feedback to the hospital. Even writing that… I’m trying to justify to myself, maybe to you, that it was traumatic. 

The first part of managing trauma is accepting it as trauma. I wasn’t able to do that for a long time. It’s hard even now, 20 months later. I can still hear the bargaining part of my brain saying, “It wasn’t that bad,” “You didn’t die, she didn’t die.”

My daughter was not breathing at birth. I don’t know what happened when she was born. Of course I know, but I don’t. I remember seeing the medical team surrounding her. I’ve read the surgical reports and I still don’t understand. Or maybe I can’t understand. She went to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) after being held by her Dad for a moment. There was an instinctual part of me that knew I shouldn’t hold her. It’s so hard to write that, even now I can feel the shame crawling up my throat. I was too wrapped up in what I had gone through to be there for her. Her birth was one of the first experiences of shame I felt as a Mother.

Over the next few months it felt like my world had shattered. And in many ways, it still does feel like that. Instead of trying to keep it all together, I try to find beauty in the shatters. I’m not trying to pick up the pieces anymore. Everything we experienced in those early months connects together:

• Because we were separated, we struggled with breastfeeding and feeding in general
• She struggled to gain weight so we had appointments everyday for what felt like weeks

For me:

• Insomnia, shame, anxiety, depression, flashbacks and the fatigue, nausea, disconnection, tingling and weight that comes along with those experiences 
• The intense nerve pain that had me shopping for black market gabapentin. Getting in and out of the car was excruciating for all of the follow-up visits 
• Rage in all its fucking glory 
• Avoidance of any possible reminders of birth
• Intrusive and disturbing thoughts and images 

The shame is so loud sometimes. Still. When people, family, compare our story to theirs. 

“My daughter had a c-section and she was fine.”

“I didn’t have to use soothers because we didn’t have a problem breast-feeding.”

“None of my children had any problems gaining weight.”

“You will get over this.”

“You did it, you must be so happy!”

“These years are so precious.”

“Come for a visit, we would love to see you.”

“You need to be more flexible.”

“Well I hemorrhaged after the birth….” 

I can look now and understand that the people who make these comments mean no harm and are just doing what humans do – shielding themselves from the hard stuff, the stuff that we try to ignore, trying to find space, understanding or reprieve in my story. 

There is no comparison, there is no diminishing, there is just the trauma that my body holds when I speak or write of our story. That living experience is still there and needs support instead of shame. Were other births more medically complex? Absolutely. Do other people have less manageable challenges to their birth experience? Yes. And yet, there the trauma is. No matter how much I try to get away from it, it’s still there. 

The minds of others do not get to decide what is and what is not trauma. 

The term postpartum has an air or an insinuation attached that it ends. Like somehow, someday I will be the same as before and I have an inner knowing that I won’t. 20 months later and I am still taken back to that day. The panic rises through my chest as the claws of panic take hold of my throat, my breath stops, eyes well and glaze as the fog comes into my mind. I feel as if I am choking underwater. 

Because I will never ‘get over’ this, I will never ‘get over’ the trauma of this birth. The day that was meant to be connected and beautiful and loving was filled with miscommunication, error and terror. The weeks and months following were full of invalidation, dismissing and comparison. Maybe one day my body will react less. Maybe it won’t. 

And that’s OK.

Instead of getting over it, I am practicing acceptance. Acceptance of my experience and the reactions that have ebbed and flowed everyday since. Acceptance that other people manage their pain in the way that they manage it and that it has nothing to do with me. Accepting that the week leading up to and on the day of my daughter’s birth, I will struggle. It’s OK to not be OK. Being not OK can be managed.