Birth Trauma Resources

What is Birth Trauma?

Birth trauma can be physical, emotional, psychological or a combination of the three. 

Birth trauma is real and experienced by many birthing people.

In this article, we are going to focus on what the signs and symptoms are of someone who may be healing from an emotional birth trauma.

We often fantasize about and sometimes fear our birth from the moment we find out we are pregnant.

We all want that “perfect” birth.

We can fantasize about our waters breaking on their own, no interventions, a speedy labor with a beautiful entrance to the world. 

No tears and lastly, no birth trauma. 

Everything goes according to our plan and things are “perfect.” 

Unfortunately this is not the case for all birth stories and there are times that even if interventions didn’t happen, our births can still not go as planned.  

We experience birth trauma most when the labor has medical interventions that take from your body's intuition, you were not given informed consent, you did not feel supported by your birth team, or emergencies arose. 

If you’d like to learn more about the process of medical inventions and bodily intuition, check out our article: Rise of Inductions: Why is it normalized? 

Symptoms & Signs of Emotional Birth Trauma

There is a wide spectrum of birth trauma symptoms. 

Each individual may experience the same trauma and handle them completely differently. 

This is absolutely normal and we are never in a place where we can dismiss the severity of one’s trauma. 

Someone who may be at risk for long-term challenges from their birth trauma may have felt fearful, helpless or unheard during their birth. 

Afterwards they may be shocked, numb or even feel guilt. This can lead into anxiety, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, nightmares, many PTSD symptoms along with higher risk of postpartum depression.