Traumatic Birth

You arrive at the hospital with your birth plan in place, only for the whole thing to be the most traumatic experience of your life. You expected a normal delivery of a healthy baby, and no one prepared you for the unexpected. Delivery seemed like a whirlwind full of bad news, interventions that you didn’t want and being given no choices, perhaps by doctors and nurses who didn’t listen to you. You might have thought you or your baby were going to die during delivery.

These are the stories we often hear from women like you whose labor and delivery were traumatic for them. If this was you, you are not alone, but if you don’t get to process through your birth story, it can leave you with the lingering symptoms of trauma that don’t go away on their own.

Help is Available

Trauma therapy such as EMDR can directly address the trauma symptoms and provide relief from the painful thoughts and memories, allowing you to recover and reclaim who you were before the labor and delivery. Through therapy, new mothers can regain the joy they expected to have when having a baby. Therapy allows the release of negative memories, thoughts and feelings, freeing up space for acceptance, forgiveness and hopefulness. Therapy addresses the trauma at the root, so that it doesn’t continue to grow and fester in your life as a new parent.

After therapy, clients share that they can talk about their birth experience without crying, go back to the OBGYN office or hospital without a high level of anxiety and can bond with their infants as well as their partners. Women are no longer afraid of giving birth again in the future, despite their previous experience. Women feel empowered over their birth experience, owning it and even feeling joyful in parts of it.

We Have the Experience You Need

We are trained trauma professionals and have the experience you need to help you recover fully from this unanticipated event. We can help you get back on track and leave the traumatic birth experience in the past, no longer plaguing you. Using EMDR therapy or Internal Family Systems, somatic experiencing or a combination thereof, we can help you get past this event and feel like yourself again.

It can be difficult to realize that you even need help. You will hear practitioners and well-meaning family and friends discount your experience saying things like, “Well you and the baby are healthy and that is all that matters.” They don’t truly understand what it is like to have the happiest day of your life turn into your worst nightmare. Everyone wants to focus on the baby, but you need to heal emotionally as well. That is why it is critical that you get into therapy as soon as possible.