This week is Birth Trauma week. Today Nat shares her experience with birth trauma and how a birth listening service helped.
Words: Nat Walker (@natskywalkr)
Becoming a mother has, for me, been the most powerful experience I could have imagined. I consider myself one of the very lucky ones – I fell in love with Isla the moment I laid eyes on her, and our bond has only grown stronger with every day that has passed since. But it could have been so different, and I put that down to the care we received not during and immediately surrounding her birth, as I’ll go into in a moment, but after we had got home and really started to process the huge event that had just taken place.
My birth story is not unusual; I was almost two weeks overdue, we were encouraged (persuaded) to begin the induction process, and from there on things went down a pretty common route that is sometimes referred to as a “cascade of intervention”.
This isn’t for one minute to say inductions aren’t safe, necessary, and frequently successful, but I knew from the moment we agreed on this option, I was being pushed down a path I wasn’t comfortable with. Nevertheless, pressure from consultants based on my due date and what turned out to be a wildly inaccurate predicted birth weight meant I felt I had no choice. This feeling of loss of control and autonomy that was to continue throughout labour and birth was going to become the hardest part of my experience in the process.
My experiences of labour
Without giving a minute-by-minute account of Isla’s delivery, let’s just say we went through 27 hours of labour, ever-increasing medication and pain relief, unsuccessful ventouse, unsuccessful forceps, and finally an emergency c-section. We, unfortunately, had a pretty cold and unsupportive midwife for the crucial last six hours of this experience, though thankfully the fantastic theatre staff helped me hold it together.
And at the time, I just felt lucky that I was still able to have near-instant skin-to-skin, and that both myself and my daughter were healthy and happy. It wasn’t until the next morning when staff repeatedly used the word “traumatic” when asking me how I was feeling, that I began to question my own experience. The immediate euphoria of meeting my baby cleared a little, and I began to wonder how and why things had gone the way they did, why had I let my plans and needs be so quickly moved to the side, we did we have no emotional or personal support throughout, and what were the additional checks that Isla was having but were never explained to us.
Leaving hospital
Nevertheless, I pushed to be discharged as soon as possible and we were allowed home after just 36 hours. With my wonderful partner and my Mum by my side, we muddled through the early days together, and though I was growing increasingly emotional and overwhelmed I put this down as normal, until our day five home visit from a midwife who, in hindsight, changed the course of my entire early motherhood experience.
Despite mine and Isla’s check-ups being perfect, she just knew there was something more, and she encouraged me to leave Isla with her Dad and join her in private, where the floodgates opened and I realised how confused, scared and honestly, traumatised I was about the direction my labour and birth had taken.
She let me speak, ask questions, vocalise feelings I didn’t even understand, and finally she helped me arrange a birth debrief for 12 weeks down the line – enough time to collect our thoughts, write down questions, and work out what we wanted to take away from the process. Though it felt a long way off, for the first time I had something back in my control, and when the fear and uncertainty crept back, my partner and I would talk, write, and put it away, knowing we would have our chance to unpack everything.
My experiences of the birth listening services
Because of this, when the time came to go back to the hospital for the debrief itself, I felt prepared, ready, even excited to offload all the feelings that were lingering, desperate to be untangled.
And I couldn’t have hoped for a better experience. From the moment we arrived, the midwife was open and honest, hugely knowledgeable, warm and empathetic, and had clearly taken the time to read up on my birth. She had all the information needed to answer our questions and gave us as much time as we needed to go through all our points.
We started by talking through the entire experience, why certain decisions were made, why certain options were or weren’t offered to us, and when we could have taken a different route.
She explained everything in both medical detail and in emotional and personal terms, she took on board our feedback in good faith, even where we felt we had been let down, never once trying to justify her colleagues’ actions or downplay our feelings. She explained the actions that would be taken based on what we had fed back to hopefully improve any future birthing mothers’ experiences, and we trusted completely that it wouldn’t be swept under the carpet once we left her office.
How I felt after the birth listening service
And though it hadn’t really been on our radar, she took the time to discuss with us how any future pregnancies and births could be affected, what our options would be, what the risks were and the impact it could have on the outcome of pursuing a natural birth in future. She reassured us that though every midwife, nurse, and the consultant had only the purest of intentions in their advice – to achieve a successful delivery and healthy mother and baby – that we, and only we, were able to make our own decisions, and she helped us believe we would have the strength to do so in future.
Why I’d recommend every mum accessing the birth listening service
We left our debrief feeling supported, understood and equipped with the tools to take forward through the early months of parenthood and into any future expansions to our family – and I have recommended to almost every new mother I know to take up the opportunity if they have the chance. Whether you are struggling every day with processing your experience or simply have questions or moments you don’t remember or understand properly, it’s an incredibly valuable process to go through. And it doesn’t matter if your birth was “more or less” traumatic than others – every experience is unique, every feeling valid, every family different and every person as deserving of the chance to move through motherhood supported mentally as well as physically.
Finally, the weight that was lifted from my shoulders almost immediately was worth the two hours we spent with our midwife ten-times over, but because success in treating mental health is difficult to measure, it’s an often unrecognised and underfunded service. So if you believe in or have experiences the value of a birth debrief, please reach out to your hospital or your local trust to let them know how important it is – and spread the word where you can, so more mothers have access to the help they deserve.
How to access birth listening services in the UK
Birth listening services can be accessed via your Midwife and local hospital. Unfortunately, some of these services have been suspended due to COVID so do check with your midwife/health visitor. Below are some useful links for parents needing support with traumatic birth.
Birth Trauma Association (they also have trained peer support workers you can access).
Wow Im frustrated. Im not calling you out though, really I think its everyone else that is responsible.