Is Your Birth Trauma Impacting Your Decision to Have Another Child?

Birth is a complex process, especially related to societal expectations.  Birth is portrayed to be the most painful and grueling process, yet is expected to be the most joyous and meaningful. What happens when your experience doesn’t line up?

After a birth experience that did not go as you imagined, there can be a significant impact on your decision to have additional children. You might be asking yourself “what if that happens again?”, “can I handle that again?”, “what if it’s even worse next time?”.

Whether you gave birth last month or 10 years ago, you might still be grappling with your birth story (or stories). This past experience might be serving as an emotional barrier to decide what’s next for you and your family.

The decision to have children or additional children is deeply personal and complex. Let’s talk about why your birth trauma may be interfering with this choice and what to do about it!

The Label of Birth Trauma

I believe the terminology of birth “trauma” is its own barrier to people acknowledging the emotions of their struggle and getting help. What I have noticed is birthing people tend to down play their experience and feel it’s not bad “enough” to label as “trauma”. This is not any fault on the birthing people. The blame is on societal expectations.

Society tells us that no matter what we went through, we should be happy to have a healthy baby.  It makes people feel ungrateful as if acknowledging the hardships along the way means we forgot about our beautiful babies.

If it helps you at all, here is the permission to use whatever word you feel fits for your experience. The word trauma has a BIG spectrum of applications and experiences. Your experience of “trauma” doesn’t need to be compared to anything else. It doesn’t matter what your friend went through and how much “worse” it was.

I want to empower you to label it accurately only for you.

Ripple Impact of Birth Trauma

Let’s talk about the impact birth trauma has on our postpartum experience.

The postpartum experience can be incredibly taxing both physically and mentally. The job that is asked of you is to function on little to no sleep, learn the needs of a human you just recently met and who cannot articulate those needs well, possibly take care of other children, find a way to feed this baby and make it work, keep your partnership or marriage afloat, and much more. That’s one hell of a job description.

Think about meeting those expectations on top of experiencing a traumatic event. It’s taking two VERY challenging tasks and combining them.

Let’s use an analogy. Let’s say your friend’s dad just passed away. They are devastated, heartbroken, and grieving. Would you expect this friend to function as their usual self? Probably not, they are going through something terrible.

Now, the same thing applies to you. You might have went through something terrible or several terrible things. We can’t ignore that this will impact the person you show up as postpartum.

When thinking of having additional children, you might grapple with the idea of going through that postpartum experience again. How much of your postpartum experience was impacted by your birthing experience? Maybe give that period of time another look from a different lens.

Why Is This Decision So Hard?

The Desire to Protect Yourself

Anytime the brain or body experiences trauma, it wants to find a way to protect itself. This sounds nice in theory but this response can sometimes be unhelpful. Think of the person who has experienced a car accident, they might not want to drive again for fear of it reoccurring. Not driving may technically keep them safer, but this also might keep them from living their life.

Same goes for birth trauma. Your brain and body might perceive birth as a threat leading to high anxiety even thinking about being pregnant or giving birth again. The tough part here is that birth may have been a threat to your life or your child’s life and that is terrifying to think of recreating.

Healing Physical Wounds

Healing your body after any type of birth can be incredibly tough. Depending on your birth experience, healing your body might have taken longer, been more painful, or restrictive. We already talked about how birth trauma can impact your postpartum experience but this adds another level of difficulty.

Your body is hurting, your brain can’t stop replaying the events from birth, you’re trying to ignore the hurt and feel only gratitude, and you haven’t slept for more than 2 hours at a time. Even if you LOVE being a mother, it’s ok that this combination might give you pause on choosing to do this again.

Healing After Birth Trauma

Talk to Someone Trusted

Please take this piece of advice with care and intention. Do not just talk to anyone about your birth trauma. I encourage you to think about the people in your life and identify the most emotionally safe person. Unfortunately, well-intended friends or family might respond in ways that are unhelpful or even hurtful. The goal here is to feel heard.

If you do not have friends or family who you feel comfortable opening up to about your birth story, then therapy can be the perfect place. Please remember that you don’t have to choose one or the other. Sometimes talking about your birth story in different settings can be helpful.

Write It Out

This sounds simple, I know. When you keep your anxious thoughts to yourself, it’s like ping pong balls in a room, bouncing from one wall to another with no exit. Talking and writing can be helpful tools to give those ping pong balls an exit. Allowing them to pass through.

Please be intentional when writing out your story. Set yourself up in a calming and safe space, set a timer for how long you want to work on this, identify some coping skills ahead of time to utilize if your emotions become heightened. If you start writing and it feels too overwhelming, do not push yourself. This might be a sign that writing is not suiting you right now.

Identify The Sticking Points

Which part(s) do you keep returning to in the birth story? These are the areas that need attention. Whether through therapy, journaling, or your own form of processing, these areas need a deeper dive to figure out what is under the surface.

Examining Control

If you do choose to have additional children, it might be worth examining what aspects from your previous birth experiences were in and out of your control. Essentially, is there anything you can do differently next time?

Think of the resources you might be able to utilize: birth doula, equipment, different types of birthing provider (midwife vs.OBGYN), emotional regulation skills, hypnobirthing, therapy, birth plans, setting expectations for yourself, learning to set boundaries, advocating for yourself, etc.

Take Away

Most people don’t go into birth expecting to experience birth trauma. It’s something that often punches us in the gut. Here’s the good news, there are options for support and coping skills to help you ride the wave of that trauma a bit smoother. You do not need to suffer alone.

If you want to have another child but feel held back by your past birth experience, Julianne Peters is here to help during your journey in motherhood.  Feel free to reach out to Julianne to get scheduled and work together!