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Birth Trauma
The term Birth Trauma is not yet a diagnostic term in the diagnostic manuals. However, specialists in the field of trauma are finding that there is a different presentation of challenges that seem to be shared among people who experienced a traumatic birth journey. As such, among trauma specialists, Birth Trauma is recognized as its own category. Because it happens at a very early period of life, it has to do with coming into existence. It is also fundamentally relational. It involves the mother-child dyad at a deep cellular, biological, and attachment level. Birth Trauma can have profound and lasting effects that extend into adulthood, in obvious and subtle ways that impact mental, emotional, relational, and physical health. A traumatic birth impacts the mother as well as the baby. In this Focus Area page, we refer to Birth Trauma with a focus on the baby’s experience and its impact in adulthood.
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Common Symptoms & Challenges Faced in Adulthood Linked to Birth Trauma
Speak to our SpecialistsPeople who suffer from Birth Trauma may not be aware of it because memory before the age of 2 is not stored in our thinking brain. Rather, it is stored as procedural memory. The symptoms related to Birth Trauma can present as cognitive, physical, emotional, and behavioral patterns that impact the person’s ability to thrive in different areas of life. The following are some of the common symptoms and challenges faced in Adulthood that can be linked to Birth Trauma:
- Grief: Loneliness, melancholy, and depression caused by a lack of natural and healthy primal connection with the mother.
- Scattered Overwhelm: Confusion about the world and difficulty participating in it.
- Hypervigilance: Constantly being on alert, often feeling unsafe or threatened.
- Dissociation: Feeling separate, distant, detached, or as if the world does not feel real, or you do not feel real.
- Emotional Overwhelm & Numbness: A narrow window of tolerance to everyday experiences, triggering a sense of detachment from emotions, or of being easily overwhelmed by emotion.
- Communication Difficulties: Difficulty in effective communication and forming connections with others.
- Boundary Confusion: Difficulty sensing one’s own boundaries, difficulty sensing the impulse for a boundary, or oversetting a boundary.
- Feelings of Guilt, Shame and Low Self-Esteem: Diminished sense of self-worth, feelings of failure, sense of abandonment, and existential loss.
- Existential Crisis: A painful feeling of being lost and confused about why you exist and the purpose of life. Questioning your right to exist, if you are welcome in this world.
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): May present as highly anxious or highly avoidant personalities.
- Avoidance of Intimacy: Fear or discomfort with sexual intimacy.
- Physiology Dysregulation: Includes such challenges as digestive issues, skin-sensation sensitivity, weakness in proprioception & coordination.
The above describes common symptoms found in adults who have a birth trauma history. A mother will present with different symptoms related to a traumatic delivery. Supporting the mother with postnatal recovery is important because it impacts both the mother and the baby.
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Factors that can lead to Birth Trauma
How does one consider Birth Trauma as part of a person’s history? Often, many will note that the process of birth in itself is a traumatic experience. However, while this journey can be a challenging and stressful one for both mother and child, not all birth experiences leave a trauma imprint.
Common factors that can lead to Birth Trauma include:
- Alcohol & substance use and abuse by the mother during pregnancy
- Mother exposed to physical, sexual, and or emotional abuse during conception and or pregnancy
- Mother exposed to high stress or traumatic experiences during conception, pregnancy & or delivery
- Complications during delivery requiring intervention
- High-stress incidences for mother and/or baby immediately post-delivery
Even common early surgeries that are not emergency states but still require medical procedures (such as tongue tie, cleft lip, etc.) can also be connected with birth trauma and medical trauma.
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The Birth Journey & the 4th Trimester
The birth journey is one of the most special journeys that we all go through. Does this journey begin at conception? Or further along into labor? What about post labor? Any of these phases that are part of our coming into being are critical, sensitive phases.
If we were to focus on the birth process itself, the part involved with labor and immediately after labor, this is a moment in the journey that is very significant. It is in this phase that the baby and mother are working together to help the baby go through the canal and come out into the world. For many, this journey will go smoothly enough with a nourishing outcome in the end.
For others, it can involve challenges and obstacles to overcome. A birth complication itself can leave a traumatic imprint. And so can medical procedures. Medical procedures that are thankfully lifesaving can still have a traumatic impact and can be interpreted by the body – of both mother and newborn – as an attack (such as via surgery, intubation, defibrillation, or being placed in the NICU) or as toxicity (such as via administered drugs and anaesthesia).
The NICU presents special consideration. Thankfully, NICU healthcare practices have continued to evolve in a way that is more supportive of what the baby needs beyond the physical medical intervention. However, the NICU experience can also be a traumatic experience as it involves the experience of separation, isolation, and physically being kept in an unnatural, non-comforting, position (on back, arms out, whereas a baby would prefer to be curled in).
Then there is the postpartum period. This is an important phase of the whole process. In fact, in 2002, pediatrician Dr. Harvey Karp coined the term ‘Fourth Trimester” to indicate that it has its own needs and sanctity. The time frame after birthing the baby is one that requires special care, behavioral changes and atmosphere adjustments around the mother and the family.
Why can a Birth Trauma impact Self Esteem?
Low self esteem, guilt, and shame are common experiences with birth trauma. This is a very delicate stage in life. It is the moment of existence. And it is reliant on a relationship with another: the mother, and the environment; the womb and the external world, to survive and survive well. A challenging birth where the mother and newborn were separated and could not make the natural connection of warmth, nourishment, and safety can result in low self-concept, low self-esteem, a sense of shame, and a questioning of one’s place in the world.
The Impact of Birth Trauma in Adulthood
Commonly, the impact of Birth Trauma is often not immediately identifiable by others. Keep in mind that, most likely, there is no cognitive awareness or memory of the birth trauma. Rather, it tends to appear as chronic behavioral, emotional, and cognitive challenges. In adulthood, these can have an impact on relationships and work success.
When there is no obvious physical impairment caused by Birth Trauma, these relational difficulties may not be recognized as birth trauma imprints, and may be taken for granted merely as character structures and personality - such as being sensitive, stubborn, irritable, weepy, aloof, empathic, mistrusting, highly independent, overly dependent, and emotionally volatile.
Birth Trauma can also present with rushed, lethargic or disrupted patterns of basic physiological functions like eating, digestion, and sleeping. It also affects relational functions of attachment and bonding, physical functions of motor coordination and posture, and cognitive functions such as spatial awareness, orientation, and focus.
Who contributed to our understanding of Birth Trauma?
Thanks to observations and collaborations among somatic psychotherapists, craniosacral therapists, and energy healers, Birth Trauma as a specific category in the trauma-healing field has gained recognition in recent times and is a gradually growing specialization. The development of frameworks and training tools on how to heal Birth Trauma has been spearheaded by therapists like Ray Castellino, Kate White, Jaap van der Waal, John & Anna Chitty and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, and Lisbeth Marcher, just to name a few.
Choosing BMY to help recover from Birth Trauma
At BMY, we believe in offering gentle, holistic, alternative approaches to healthcare that can support each person along their journey towards greater wellbeing overall. We understand the body-mind dynamic and that there is a connection between physical, emotional and behavioral symptoms and our unique histories. As such, we strive to offer holistic approaches that provide natural therapies that can meet our clients where they are and support different possibilities for healing.