Restablishing the Wonder & Awe of Childbirth; Releasing the Trauma we Hold from it.

This blog forms part of a series of self healing blogs where Rachael explores and shares the journey of her recent, near death experience, of bringing my youngest daughter into the world.

My last blog in this series was Changing your DNA; Healing through your Ancestors. Changing your Blueprint.

I hope something I share will trigger or resonate with you on some level; for your own experience or that of a loved one. Please let me know if this does.

Having gone through two fairly traumatic births (the one in the middle was fairly easy!), it’s occurred to me I’ve not gone through anything unusual. What I’ve suffered, many, many women go through. That doesn’t belittle anything that I or any other woman goes through.

In fact it does just the opposite.

The fact that so many women go through it, means society, and even the medical profession in my experience, undervalue the impact that these births have.

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Having had to be readmitted after this last one, as I lay there (feeling peed off and sorry for myself in all honesty) I noted the other women in the room who had experiences as me. The young girl next to me all stitched up after an episiotomy, thinking ‘you’re in for it when the epidural wears off, poor thing’ and the couple in the corner calmly chatting about her signing up for a post natal fitness class while waiting for her induction to start working thinking ‘girl don’t make any plans until you’re on the other side’. I wanted to go round and chat with each of them, sensitively, about what to genuinely expect and about giving themselves a break. Allowing things to flow and not beating themselves up when things don’t go as expected, as planned; as society expects it to go.

I had one conversation with a lady about how she had been told she could breast feed with no issues, despite only having one functioning breast, but she was unsure. I hope that by telling her that I was peed off with having to justify to two midwives a day for the last 10 days, despite having fed my oldest two myself, gave her some relief that she could do what suited her, despite what other people were telling her. I also hope it helped the girl next to me feel better, after hearing her cry when her newborn wasn’t latching on after a traumatic birth for both of them.

To have a conversation with one woman and the continued help and chit chat over the next 24 hours between us, made me feel better. That communion.

Us women generally so wrapped up in feeling the trauma and shame in our failure at the perfect birth or the perfect model breastfeeding mother, that we failed to reach out to eachother; sat separately in our hospital beds. Failing to take solisce in the communion of others.

And it’s this communion with others that fixes this too. And as I move further into that stage of my healing, I’ll share that with you too.

Where I am now is recognising that there is an endemic of traumatized post birth women. Likely traumatized post birth partners too (again not quite there yet myself, so the other half is going to have to wait bless him!).

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For me. With my first. Being told to remain still while I went through 9 hours of 3 minutes contractions with my son being back to back so the machine could take readings easier. Finding out later that the best way to get a baby to turn the right way is movement. Traumatic.

My son being back to back pushing over a lower bowel resection scars only 18 months old, which I was told was not an issue. Only on gas and air, which was allowed to run out for a couple of hours before being checked. Traumatic.

Not being allowed to go into all fours as my body was telling me so they could set better. Having my legs constrained in stirrups, putting me in more pain and making me panic so much I tried to kick out of them. Traumatic.

Having my contractions slow with the fear, bearing down for three hours to exhaustion as no doctor was free to assess me, leading to me being cut from my backside and up and having a pair of forceps forced inside me. Tramatic.

My baby being in such distress for suffering the same trauma as me, pood inside me, was born with the cord around his neck 4 times and barely breathing. Not given to me immediately. Being so exhausted that I bore the guilt of not realising he hadn’t been of to me immediately. Traumatic.

Being stitched up. Being given little help or advice about how to care for the stitches, about how it would effect everything from peeing, to sitting, to unbelievable pain. Leading to a severe infection. Traumatic.

My recent birth much the same. Going from feeling cruddy at the end of a pregnancy in a heat wave to being at deaths door, making a decision that for survival I and the baby needed a c section, getting it, then being told I needed it under GA due to deterioration. No baby for 24 hours due to being in ICU. Being poked and prodded and interfered with for days. Worrying about the impact on the baby, the older kids, my husband. Being sent home with no real idea of what to expect from a c section or what to expect from the severe preeclampsia and HELLP syndrome or how to best aid my recovery. Being poked and prodded in my own home. Baby and I both being readmitted again for different reasons at different times, despite staying in Hospital longer initially to ensure that didn’t happen, that my medication and home plan were correct; tearing me away from my family again. Trying to get myself fit and healthy and feeling the shame and guilt for not functioning with my family or home in anyway I expected to, as an experienced mum who knew to go with the flow. The guilt and shame I feel as I didn’t meet societies expectations.

Trauma.

I’m not saying that anything that any medical professional did was wrong or unnecessary. I’m blessed and unbelievably grateful that I was in the right place at the right time with the right people 5 weeks ago (today!).

I’m not trying to make out what I’ve suffered is so much write than any other woman.

I’m not trying to own the victim label. Far from it.

What I’m trying to do is to get us as women, our partners, the medical profession and society as a whole to acknowledge that this is a f**king trauma.

This is us not ‘just’ pregnancy or childbirth. Just because it happens every minute, doesn’t make it ordinary.

It’s extraordinary!!! It’s unbelievable! It’s miraculous! It’s manifestating life in its truest, most primal, most raw form!!

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Really think about that. The energy, the physical, emotional and mental energy that process takes from inception to what is in reality, the end of our life. The spiritual energy. Whether you recognise it’s spiritual or the encompassing morality of parenthood.

And so the trauma is also amplified. Your trauma is equivalent to the energy you put into this child.

Because we have such amazing medical assistance around child birth we forget what our predecessors knew. We forget that for every mother and for every baby that comes through the other side; it’d a true blessing and something to be hugely grateful for.

Because of the wonders of modern medicine we have forgotten about the wonder of childbirth itself.

One which many of us will sit on for years.

How many women find their anxiety increased during pregnancy or when their child is newborn? The little s**t that you used to just allow to float away, now bashing you over your head or burdened on your back?

It makes sense that evolutionary a mother tuning into the instincts to keep her baby safe, held within our DNA, our successful ancestry, should kick in. But it is clear from my own experiences that this impacted on a trauma which is barely recognised and barely treated and vitally healed, at most as post natal depression, is something that needs to be looked at with clear vision and treated as such. Looked at with a level but caring mind, a knowledgeable but balanced outlook.

Now I’m at the stage of recognising, not just the trauma but the impact it’s had on my being, I’m in a much better place to heal it.

That healing is initially from the community, from others. Advice, a shoulder to lean or cry on, practical help, kind thoughts and words.

Then it’ll be from the community in terms of a healing, a recognition. An understanding and a coming together.

Think about the difference we could make just from the recognition, allowing it to be seen. The release felt just from the acknowledgement; just from the knowledge of what it is and the potential impact it may have had on you or others.

A guilty secret being shared always removes it’s power.

Let’s remove the power of this.

Let’s re-establish the recognition of the wonder of child birth. 

I’ll give you more as I go forward.

I would dearly love to hear your thoughts; does any of this resonate with you or how with what you know of society’s attitude? Have you or loved ones become more anxious following having children? Have you recognised the trauma you or others have suffered? Are you still sat with that trauma or are you ready to move on from it? Have you moved on? How did you do it? How do we help other women and their partners through this going forward?

Love as always

Rachael x