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 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 over, you might find yourself dealing with grief, disappointment, anger, shame, fear, and many other emotions. What I most want you to know is that 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 - valid and important. And you deserve to process all of it in a safe, supportive space.