When Love Hurts: Holding Space for Birth Trauma

Not the Beginning You Imagined

You picture those early days like a movie: swaddled bliss, exhausted joy, some tears, but mostly warmth. Instead, maybe you were staring at the ceiling of an operating room breathing through a chest that feels too tight. Maybe your baby was whisked away before you even heard a cry. Maybe the silence in the room felt louder than anything you've ever heard.

Birth doesn’t always go as planned. When it doesn’t, the emotional fallout can be hard to name, let alone explain.

I’ve been there. Many of my clients have too. And during Birth Trauma Awareness Week, I want to give voice to what often goes unspoken.

The Aftershock No One Warned You About

What follows a traumatic birth isn’t just sadness. It’s a kind of disorientation that shakes your sense of self. You know you “should” be grateful. People say “you’re both healthy, that’s what matters.” But inside, you may feel like you’re floating outside your body, trying to make contact with a moment that already slipped away.

Here’s a journal entry I wrote a few months after my own experience:

“In those newborn days, I was crushed by the weight of everything that had gone wrong. I felt like a shadow of the mother I wanted to be and I couldn’t understand how we got to where we were. Just days before I was blissfully but uncomfortably still pregnant. Now I was surrounded by this heavy mixture of love and despair.

It didn’t feel like darkness as much as it felt like light that I couldn’t reach. More than depression or anxiety, I was drowning in the trauma and grief. I was so full of love and yet so very, very raw. I felt like my heart had no protection and each time emotion rose, I felt it so deeply that I could not breathe.”

Reading that now, I remember how fragile I felt; not just emotionally, but physically, spiritually. I wasn’t just tired. I was ruptured and had lost myself.

Birth Trauma Is More Than a Bad Memory

Birth trauma is not limited to emergency situations. It can stem from:

• Birth Experience Mismatch:

  • When the birth plan is drastically different from reality (e.g., emergency C-section instead of planned vaginal birth).

• Feeling Ignored, Dismissed, or Powerless:

  • When the birthing parent’s voice, preferences, or pain are disregarded by medical staff.

• Emergency Situations:

  • Fast or life-threatening decisions without clear communication can induce panic or fear and post-trauma emotional symptoms.

• Loss of Control/Violation of Consent:

  • Medical interventions done without adequate explanation or consent.

• NICU Separation:

  • Parent-baby separation due to medical complications or NICU stays.

• Stillbirth or Infant Loss:

  • This is a devastating and life-altering trauma.

• Previous Trauma Triggered During Birth:

  • Including sexual trauma or medical trauma resurfacing during labor.

• Feeling Unsafe or Abandoned:

  • Especially for those birthing without trusted support people or in overwhelmed hospital systems.

The trauma isn’t just about what happened, but how it felt. So often these situations overwhelm your capacity to cope. That is, how your body and nervous system registered threat, and how your mind struggled to keep up.

How Trauma Shows Up Postpartum

You might be “high-functioning” on the outside, but still experience:

• Emotional overwhelm

• Crying spells

• Depression

• Flashbacks or replaying the birth over and over

• Nightmares or sleep disturbances

• Irritability, anger, or rage

• Intrusive thoughts or anxiety

• Frequent checking on baby for signs of illness or danger

• Numbness, dissociation, or emotional detachment

• Avoidance of reminders (e.g., hospitals, OB/GYN visits, birth stories, photos)

• Feeling disconnected from your body or from your baby

• Feelings of failure, guilt, or shame

• Hyper-vigilance or always feeling “on edge”

• Difficulty concentrating or memory problems

These are not signs of weakness. They are survival responses from a nervous system trying to process something overwhelming.

Therapy Can Help You Make Sense of What Happened

As a trauma therapist specializing in perinatal mental health, I work with mothers to gently process the grief and shock left behind by traumatic birth. This isn’t about “moving on.” It’s about making space for the story you lived—and integrating it without letting it define your entire identity as a mother.

In my practice, I use:

• EMDR therapy to safely reprocess traumatic memories

• Art Therapy to explore feelings that are too big or complex for words

• Somatic tools to reconnect with your body in a way that feels grounding, not scary

• Narrative approaches to help you reclaim your voice and rewrite your experience with care

This work is tender. It takes time. But you don’t have to go through it alone.

You Are Not Broken. You Are Grieving

Grief is the invisible thread in so many postpartum stories. Grief for the birth you hoped for. For the version of motherhood that didn’t arrive. For the “you” who got lost in the emergency, the silence, the fear.

You may be full of love and still struggling. That doesn't make you any less of a mother—it makes you human.

A Soft Place to Land

If you’re reading this with tears in your eyes or a tightness in your chest, I want you to know: your feelings make sense. You are not weak. You are not dramatic. You are not alone.

This Birth Trauma Awareness Week, I hope we can stop minimizing what birth trauma really is. I hope we can stop asking mothers to “just be grateful.” And I hope more people—providers, partners, systems—start listening.

And if you’re ready, I’d be honored to walk with you toward healing.

Therapy for Birth Trauma in Reston, Virginia and Statewide

I offer both in-person sessions in Reston, VA and online therapy across Virginia. If you’re looking for a space to unpack what happened and begin to heal, reach out here.

You don’t have to this alone.