The Trauma of Birth

Just days after I gave birth, my midwife sat with me. She saw the weariness in my eyes and said, “Birth is the best kept secret among women. I don’t tell my daughter; it would break her heart.” Of course, we all know going into it that it will be hard. That isn’t the secret… but how it feels… it’s something we couldn’t even explain if we wanted to. Later she said, “If we could tell each other what it’s like, there wouldn’t be a human race anymore.” 

Before I gave birth to our son, I had an idyllic dream surrounding what the birth would be like. We planned a home birth. I made a soothing playlist, and bought an obscene amount of pillar candles. I expected I might try a water birth. I practiced breathing, meditating, the best positions for pain-relief…

And then my water broke at 35 weeks pregnant. 

The story after is one that many birthing folks tell: the hospital was bright, sterile, scary at times. The staff was friendly enough, but they didn’t know me. I was induced and the contractions hurt far worse than I had prepped for. I got an epidural too late. I pushed myself beyond what I could handle. My son was born, and I was too numb to hold him.

However it happens, the transition to motherhood is rarely idyllic. 

For me, one day I was pregnant and tired, and the next I was broken, numb, exhausted out of my mind. It was an exhaustion I’d never known before. And then they hand you the tiny creature you’ve just pushed out of yourself, and he cries. In our case, he nearly didn’t stop crying until he was about six months old. But that’s a story for another time. 

Regardless of your baby, rest is often not something you get in the early postpartum days. And so I entered into one of the darkest periods of my life, after being sold the story of “blissful” new motherhood. What you can never know until you experience it is that bringing a new human into this world also births a new part of yourself. You have been to the thin, murky, mysterious space between life and death, to be the portal for a new soul coming earthside. It changes you. 

This period of time shocks many of us. And because we live in a society where families exist in silos–often hours and plane rides away from extended family–we are typically left largely alone to deal with it. Even our partners, who didn’t experience the birth themselves, can’t quite understand what has changed. 

The good news is that this feeling does fade, and there is help available for when the feeling is too much. For me, it certainly was. In the same conversation I mentioned earlier, I told my midwife, “I just want all the women in the world to give me a hug.” I was lucky to have a team of women who came around me and did just that–hugged me, educated me, listened to me, and cried with me. 

Asking for help in this period of time was one of the most important things I’ve ever done for myself. It sets a precedent for the rest of your parenting journey to get help early and often–and there is no shame in that. 

If you’re looking for such support, I’d love to be a part of the team to surround you and remind you that this journey may be extraordinarily difficult, but you are never alone in it.