Birth Trauma never leaves, it simply changes. I will carry the birth trauma of experiencing preeclampsia, premature birth, and a NICU stay for the rest of my life. 3 years later, I still get triggered. It can be the simplest thing such as hearing beeps that sound similar to the NICU monitors. It can also manifest itself into more complex feelings, such as heading about the pregnancy or the birth announcement of a friend or family member.
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I find it very difficult to explain my trauma surrounding birth because a handful of people really understand birth trauma. Others can’t wrap their mind around the fact that some women can have birth trauma and the birth of their baby is one of the worst days of their life.
Table of Contents
What is birth trauma?
Birth trauma is any physical or emotional distress that you may experience during childbirth or after the birth. Trauma can also be experienced in the pregnancy which is sometimes looped into the “birth trauma” category.
Can I have birth trauma even if I didn’t have any complications?
Absolutely. Birth trauma is all about perception. If you felt your birth was traumatic, then it was traumatic. Nobody else can tell you otherwise.
My Birth Trauma
The worst day of my life definitely was the day my daughter was born.
And it seems really selfish or awful to say unless you’ve been there. I don’t regret my daughter or the fact I became a mom. I just hate the fact of how it happened. Never in a million years did I expect to give birth early or under emergency circumstances.
Preeclampsia wasn’t a word in my vocabulary until the day my doctor came into my hospital room when I was 33 weeks pregnant. I wasn’t explained then what it was exactly or what was happening to my body besides that they would try to keep me pregnant until 37 weeks, but it would be taken day by day. As soon as I was discharged from that stay, I was advised to be on bed rest, take my blood pressure regularly, and call with any changes.
In the following weeks, I was in and out of my doctor’s office almost daily due to my blood pressure increasing. Once I got to 35 weeks and 3 days, my doctor decided it was no longer safe for me to be pregnant and I needed to give birth that day.
I was already experiencing contractions the day prior, so my doctor asked if he could check my cervix, which I agreed to. I was 3-4 centimeters dilated at only 35 weeks pregnant. Because of this, my doctor was able to break my water at the hospital to try and give me a chance to have a vaginal birth.
I was hooked up to magnesium sulfate, which was used to help protect my brain due to my high blood pressure reaching stroke and seizure levels. I never was able to have a vaginal birth because a few hours later my blood pressure was spiking higher and my daughter’s heart rate was decelerating rapidly. I was rushed to the OR for an emergency C-section.
I really don’t remember much of the surgery. I’m not sure if it is the drugs I was on, the trauma, or a combination of them both. I remember how scared my husband’s eyes were as he darted back and forth between me and my doctor. I remember how quiet the OR was. . until she cried. She immediately cried as soon as she was born, which shocked everyone. Due to her heart rate decelerating so rapidly, she was expected to need resuscitation. She was immediately given to the NICU team. I never saw her.
In fact, I wouldn’t see her in person until 27 hours after she had been in the world.
I was still hooked up to magnesium for 26 hours after birth because my health was so poor. I was alone in my hospital room, crying because I couldn’t understand what was happening to me. I was in the mother-baby unit of the hospital so I could hear all the other babies on the floor all day and night. I would attempt to pump breastmilk, but nothing would come.
I will never get the image out of my mind of the first time I met my daughter. I was wheeled in from a wheelchair to an incubator. This was the first time I had ever seen an incubator, not from a TV screen. It was so surreal to see that the baby I spent the last 8 months growing inside of me was inside of a plastic box.
A nurse asked if I wanted to hold her and I shyly nodded. She placed my daughter on my chest and explained to me that she was premature and small so she wouldn’t act or look like a typical newborn. She told me about her personality and how she was so adorable. My heart shattered into a million pieces to learn about my own child from a stranger.
For the following 5 days, I barely visited her in the NICU. My health was so poor that I went through several tests such as an EKG and X-ray to try and figure out what was exactly going on with me. I wasn’t recovering as well as my doctor thought I should.
On day 6, I was released from the hospital with lots of medications to keep my blood pressure somewhat stable and others from my c-section. Once I got home, my husband helped me shower, dress and eat. Within a few hours of discharge, I was back at the hospital to see our daughter.
For the next 10 days, my husband and I spent every waking moment—14 hours a day in the NICU. We only left to go eat meals and sleep. Each time we walked out of the hospital empty-handed, we cried the drive home and fell into our bed, crying ourselves to sleep. Birth trauma never leaves.
The NICU stay is incredibly lonely. Friends and family don’t know what to say or how to act—so they resort to saying and doing nothing at all. Which was difficult to cope with. My husband and I thought we had many family members and friends who would be there for us in times of need, but during this experience, we learned that wasn’t the case.
On day 15 of the NICU stay, we got to take our daughter home. For the first time since her birth, we walked out of the hospital with a baby in our arms. The NICU life came to a close, but the chapter of “Life after the NICU” started and brought its own sets of challenges. We learned how to fortify my breastmilk for feedings, juggle many different appointments, how to swaddle bathe, and how to take care of a premature baby who was still incredibly small.
Many NICU/preemie parents can relate to this: the birth trauma doesn’t fully hit you until months or years later. I was in survival mode for so long to just get through the day that it wasn’t until my daughter was starting to really thrive that I was able to gather my thoughts and think “What the heck just happened to me?”
For the first time in my life, I was taking pills to keep me alive and healthy. I was only 22 years old and I was taking blood pressure medication 3x a day to keep me at a somewhat normal level. I eventually was able to get off blood pressure medication and I haven’t had a problem with my blood pressure since.
This month marks 3 years since my birth trauma. It is interesting how it changes from year to year for me. This is the first year that I am feeling content with it all. Don’t get me wrong—if I could change what happened I would in a heartbeat. But I have come to realize that no matter how hard I wish the birth trauma away, it won’t go away. I was just given a crappy deck of cards and had to figure out how to deal with the consequences.
The first year after the birth trauma, I was numb. I didn’t have the ability to feel anything about it. It wasn’t until her second birthday I started to really have feelings about the birth trauma. I was so angry that pregnancy was so awful for me.
UPDATE AS OF 2023: It has been 4.5 years since the birth of my daughter. It has been interesting to go through the emotions of birth trauma. Birth trauma never leaves, it simply changes is an absolutely true statement. If I could change what happened, I would in a heartbeat. But, I do realize how much it has changed me for the better. I am a much better person than I was before everything I experienced. It has also forced me to grow uncomfortably mentally and emotionally. There are some things that will always make me cry and trigger me, but I am able to move through those emotions much faster than I previously could.
I knew that pregnancy wasn’t the only way to have children, but I was so mad that pregnancy wasn’t a good experience for me. I was so jealous (and sometimes still am) of women who have never experienced preeclampsia or any other type of birth trauma. And this year, I feel all of those emotions still, but they aren’t as fierce.
Birth trauma doesn’t come and go when it pleases. It is constantly with me. Even the simplest things can trigger it. It really hurts that the worst day of my life was the day my daughter entered the world. It hurts that she spent the first 27 hours of her life not even knowing if I existed. The first person to hold her wasn’t me or her dad. A nurse was her primary caregiver for the first 15 days of her life. And that really sucks.
My daughter doesn’t even remember a time when I wasn’t around. She doesn’t remember when I wasn’t there to snuggle her close when she was sad. But I do. I remember all the nights leaving her behind inside the hospital while I walked out empty-handed. I remember the emotions like it was yesterday.
My birth trauma isn’t just the day she left my body. It is the days leading after. It’s the feeling of needing permission to see your baby. It’s needing a nurse to help you shower. It is watching your doctor be puzzled about why your pressures aren’t lowering. The feeling of knowing your body is really sick and no one can help you. It’s never wanting to leave your baby behind because you spent the first weeks of their life leaving them behind.
As each year passes by since my initial experience with birth trauma, my feelings manifest themselves in different ways. I am still moving through the grief of my expected pregnancy and birth experience and everything I lost. I know how blessed I am to have not lost my baby and I am still alive, but that doesn’t erase everything I lost.
Birth trauma never leaves, it just simply changes.
Tips to navigate birth trauma
- Seek professional mental health help from a licensed therapist
- Join peer support groups
- Journal about your experience
- Talk with your provider and have a birth debrief to talk about what happened
- Reading books about birth trauma or others’ experiences
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