One of the most exciting and miraculous things to do in life is to give birth to a child, but it can also be one of the most traumatic. Usually, the child’s birth is an exciting and positive experience for parents, but some experience trauma during this process. The trauma can be physical, when an injury such as muscle damage or tears occur, or psychological, when the experience of childbirth has turned into something that relates back to PTSD. 

The feelings of distress usually lessen with time, but there are sometimes traumatic after effects that never seem to go away. Recovering from a traumatic birth can take a lot of time, and sometimes that recovery involves the support of a personal injury lawyer. If you’ve gone through childbirth and you were injured in the process and it wasn’t something to do with the actual birth but the actions of the medical professionals helping you, then you’re going to need outside support to get through it. Recovering from birth trauma can take a lot more time than you think, but there are things that you can do to help you to recover sooner. Let’s take a look at it below.

  1. Do not put judgment on yourself. The human body is a miracle, but pushing a person out of it is not going to be easy, no matter how many times you’ve done it before. While you hope and plan for your birth to be calm and exciting and.Empowering. It’s not always the case. It’s not a reflection on you as a person or a parent or as a woman for this to go wrong. The human body is not predictable and it’s natural to experience distress after an event because essentially you are grieving the experience you didn’t have. For example, if you had planned a home birth with a doula and as much natural intervention as possible, but you end up with an emergency crash C-section, you’re going to feel guilty for that, and it’s not something you should ever feel guilty for.
  2. Get some practical support. You can access help once you’ve had your baby to be able to get some support. Post birth partners, extended family or friends can help to play a vital role in assisting you with everyday tasks and getting through the trauma of the birth. If your child left you in hospital for a while afterwards, you’re going to need to ask the hospital to provide you with patient support while you’re there. Injured in the course of childbirth that has led you to complex recovery issues? Then you need to get as much support from the hospital and the doctors as you can.
  3. Get some emotional support, but accept it. It’s not easy to admit that you are struggling emotionally because it’s always portrayed that mothers should just slip back into life again once they’ve got a baby in their arms. Seeking support from those around you is natural, but seeking extensive professional help in the terms of a psychologist or a counselor is one of the best things that you could do for yourself.
  4. Be aware of postnatal depression. Depression does not mean you don’t love your child or that you didn’t like your birthing experience. It’s a natural surge of hormones that pushes you to the ground when you are going through something as traumatic as childbirth and then sent home to stay awake and look after a newborn baby. It’s the equivalent of being in a very heavy car crash but being sent home the next day and told to look after an animal that you’ve never looked after before.
  5. Talk about the trauma. One of the easiest ways to help you to recover from a traumatic birth is to talk about it. If you find yourself feeling that ongoing distress or you’re having flashbacks to the experience, then you need to talk about the feelings you’re having as well as the experience that you had. People need to hear about it, and you need to be able to offload it. Repression is only going to serve you poorly in the long term.
  6. Speak to the hospital. Birth trauma can have a negative impact on your future, especially if that trauma was physical. Speaking to the hospital is important so that you can acknowledge that you need the right support. They need to know what went wrong if you were injured in the actual C-section itself, or you’ve had injuries that have changed you for a lifetime, then you need to be able to talk to the hospital and come to a resolution so that that never happens again.