12/09/2020
Often after a traumatic birth we’re told that it’s a “normal” experience, and as long as your baby is ok, just be grateful and try to let it go. .
Even meant kindly, dismissing these feelings means that they’re less likely to be able to release and will hang around in your body’s nervous system like a team of anxious bees indefinitely. It’s a bit like pushing a beach ball under water: it’s going to come popping back up. You’re allowed to feel all sorts of emotions simultaneously, without the “bad” cancelling out the “good”. ✨ motherhood is a time of such mixed emotions: it would be unnatural to only feel joyous. .
But we tend to dismiss or keep any sadness/grief secret: we can feel ashamed and worry it means we’ll seem ungrateful or unloving towards our baby, which forms a tangle of negative feelings: guilt, anxiety, anger. ✨ Loss is an inevitable part of motherhood: Perhaps mourning the birth you didn’t have. Mourning the end of the newborn time. Sadness about NOT enjoying the newborn part at all and wondering what was wrong with you. Grief for all that time just with your first baby once you have a second and realise you never hang just as a twosome any more. Sadness about missing the pre-child you, missing the relationship with your partner. .
✨honouring sadness and loss is a really important part of motherhood. Birth cracks us open like a big fat nut. Finding space for your emotions helps us make sense of the nuttiness: whether that’s talking therapy, journalling, mindfulness meditation, EMDR for trauma..
But most of all: feeling like your birth experience has traumatised you, or is an unfinished story where you weren’t placed at the centre, a story that you feel an urgent need to rewrite or still draw together the strands of, NEVER means that you are ungrateful for being a mum, or love your baby any less. .
You are doing an amazing job. I’ve tagged some accounts who may help if you have suffered from birth trauma. Please seek support, it’s not “normal” to feel traumatised by your birth.
Tile: ❤️