Pregnant and Post Partum Women
I enjoy working with women who need to process pregnancy and childbirth issues. At times, women have trauma histories, and their histories include childhood and adult trauma that may flare back up again during pregnancy and childbirth. Research has shown that if someone has experienced PTSD, they are are greater risk of experiencing PTSD again during stressful events. And yes, pregnancy and childbirth can be stressful. Even if the outcome is “healthy baby, healthy mom,” the way that it happened can be traumatic. So it’s an “and” – we can be happy about the outcome of having a baby in our arms, “and” we can grieve and need to process how that happened.
Whether the stressors came from pregnancy, things like “Hyperemesis gravidarum” or “pre-eclampsia” or “incompetent cervix” or pre-term labor, a history of pregnancy losses or pre-term births, insomnia, financial stressors, triggering of previous stressful pregnancies and childbirths, babies who are breech or transverse, plancetas that are not positioned well like “placenta previa or accrectia” : all that may turn a joyful event into a stressor including bed-rest, more frequent monitoring and more. Women need often times help in processing the stressors / trauma surrounding their pregnancies. It is normal; it’s that we often times feel like we can’t talk about it.
Other stressors / trauma (yes this is real) occur during the childbirth process. These issues can include, but are not limited to, prolonged labors, interventions like pitocin, hospital policies that restrict movement and eating, lack of privacy, lack of the care-providers we expected to be with us, changing of staff during labor (women do get stressed over the change in staff from the nurses to doctors and midwives who need to leave at the end of their work period.) Other issues include unexpected c-sections or interventions like needing a vacuum or forceps delivery, hemorrhages (either during labor or after labor), NICU admits, or so many other unexpected issues.
All these impact women, the ability to breastfeed, to sleep, to function after birth, to parent older children. Often times women come home after having a baby to step right back into the role of mother – cooking, cleaning, caring for older children plus needing to care for their babies. If they have trauma histories, it makes perfect sense that PTSD may flare up again.
We know people of color suffer more in the “birth industry” of the U.S. I want to be able to help in my small way to educate and to heal and to empower change. What’s interesting, in a twisted way, is that economic power doesn’t affect the outcomes. So you can be a poor woman of color or a super educated, wealthy woman, but when you enter the pregnancy / childbirth system, it doesn’t seem to matter. This needs to change radically for all women, but especially those of color.
I have heard in my past 25 years involved with the birth community some really disturbing stories. Of course I hear all the wonderful outcomes. But I take note of the women who have had another trauma added to their history. This seems unacceptable. We even have “family centered c-sections.” Why aren’t they offered routinely if c-sections are so routine? They seem to offset some of the difficulties associated with a surgical birth. And, yet they are a “Unicorn” in the birthing community.
Some tools we may use are Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, EMDR but first of all we would like work on regulation skills typically using HeartMath.
After working through PTSD and trauma, and identifying issues that interfere with your desire to feel healthy and happy and bonding with your baby, you may find yourself more centered, relaxed, able to handle stressors, attached more closely to your baby as you are freed from flashbacks and avoidance of triggering material.
