Nontraumatic birth is traumatic

Hey everyone!

So, I just read this article called "My Traumatic Birth Was Traumatic to Me" and it is about Becky Schroeder's (author of the article) experience giving birth. I remember one day in our class we were talking about how much more a baby is valued in this society than the mother, and that when a mother gives birth, the first question that pops into everyone's mind is "How is the baby?" not "Are you okay? How do you feel?"- to the mother. This article demonstrates this perfectly!

When the medical field, and basically our entire society, defines what a "nontraumatic birth" they say "it is when the baby arrives healthily and safely, the baby's nor the mother's life was in any danger, and there were no serious threats". However, what if labor lasted 15 hours? What if it took the mother 3.5 hours to push her baby out instead of the common 1-2 hours? What if the epidural stopped working and mother was in agonizing pain, screaming her ass off and exhausted from all the pushing she had to do? Does any of that contribute to whether the mother had a traumatic birth or not? By medical standards, no. Apparently, that just means labor and delivery was difficult, not traumatic. This is exactly what happened to Schroeder. Despite everything she felt - the pain, shock, anger, exhaustion, confusion, etc - the doctors, family and her friends still believed that she did not have a traumatic birth because the baby was healthy, it was delivered safely and mother and child are still alive.

Trauma and being traumatized (or not) does not only consider the act or the event that has occurred, but the mindset of person receiving the trauma as well. Although nobody thought Schroeder had a traumatic experience, she felt traumatized. Childbirth was a traumatic experience for her and she was traumatized. Despite the fact that she had a beautiful baby girl on her chest, she still could not get over the shock. She still could not get over the severe pain she just endured, the exhaustion and the psychological distress. And yet, business went on as usual. Everyone tended to the baby, they made sure she had all 10 fingers an toes, and they gloated about how perfect she was. The mother? Ignored in the background, still suffering from the physical and psychological damage caused by childbirth.

I actually find this very saddening to hear that situations like this happen all the time. And the worst part is that we are all in some way guilty of doing this. We think of babies as fragile little things, we dote on it every second of every day, and sometimes we just forget about the mother. Sometimes the mother even forgets about herself because all she can think of is her baby. But, what we have to realize is that not everyone experiences childbirth the same, no matter how similar childbirth may look from woman to woman. It can be a very traumatic experience; and like any other person who went through a traumatic experience, all a mother really needs is for someone to focus on her, to ask her if she is okay, to explain to her what just happened, to hug her, and to tell her that everything is going to be okay.

Check out the article here!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/becky-schroeder/my-nontraumatic-birth-was_b_5639342.html