Is it my fault? Resisting shame and blame in birth trauma

Charlotte Mindel is a mother and somatic therapist supporting mums through pregnancy and motherhood, with a focus on de-shaming anger and building capacity for joy in motherhood. She shares her thoughts on how healing from a challenging or shocking birth is so much more than the event itself.

Matrescence is now recognised as the period of transformation that mothers go through after having a baby. It’s a time where we leave some of our old identity in the past, we carry some of it through into the present, and we develop new and emerging parts of ourselves which are useful in motherhood.

In a simple world where everything goes to plan, pregnancy would be intuitive, birth would be powerful, and the integration into motherhood would be hard but manageable and joyful. However, we don’t live in a simple world. We live in a world where complex pregnancies and challenging or traumatic births are far too common. So what does that mean for the mother?

Changing the shape of motherhood

Matrescence is shaped by any trauma we hold, not just birth trauma; however due to the nature of birth trauma, it will have a notable impact on a woman’s integration into motherhood. Therefore, moving into matrescence with the addition of a challenging, shocking or traumatic birth completely changes the shape of it. It changes from a period of curiosity, growth and connection, to an experience of survival, often anger, disconnection and isolation.

Not everyone thinks about trauma in the same way, and I am aware of how off-putting or exclusionary this word can be. For some clarification, when I share about trauma, what I’m often thinking about is a woman who felt ignored, unsupported, shocked, disempowered, unheard or trapped in her experience of birth.

Responding to threat

If you did find yourself in a position of shock, violation or vulnerability in birth, your body will have responded to this as a threat. A threat could be something as seemingly small as an unfamiliar person walking into the room where you’re labouring, to something much greater like being given an intervention without your consent.

When experiencing a threat, the first instinct of our body is always to assess whether it is possible to fight our way out in order to return to safety. When it comes to birth, a version of ‘fighting’ might look like shouting, kicking or pushing someone away - for most women that either doesn’t feel possible because it feels inappropriate  or simply isn’t possible because they’re exhausted, on medication or in a compromising position. The body will then revert to other survival responses, often landing on ‘freeze’ because it’s the most available response given the circumstances of birth.

“When experiencing a threat, the first instinct of our body is always to assess whether it is possible to fight our way out in order to return to safety.”

Dealing with anger

Not having been able to fight your way out of the situation will leave the charge of anger in your body. So now, you’ve had a challenging birth, you have a baby who requires all of your attention and body, you may have spent some time in hospital or NICU, and you don’t have a lot of time to yourself to process your birth. The combination of all of these things can leave a mother feeling resentful and angry in the weeks, months and even years following her birth; this may sometimes feel irrational to the woman experiencing it.

Anger will push those around us away, it will seek to blame people, places or things for our experience (possibly rightly so, but this is often displaced after the original event). It will show up as impatience, irritability and disconnection. In all, it will make  the early days of motherhood a whole lot more challenging. While it seems like ‘anger is bad’, it is really just there as a reminder that we needed something that we could not get at the time. Often a lot of support from loved ones, or from a professional, can lead to the resolution of this anger so that it no longer has to be the primary experience of motherhood.

“While it seems like ‘anger is bad’, it is really just there as a reminder that we needed something that we could not get at the time.”

The spectre of shame

However, there is another layer of complexity to matrescence following birth trauma, which may also prevent you from seeking support. This is shame. Shame tends to show up when we feel like we are bad or we are wrong. The reason shame appears following birth trauma tends to be because the unprocessed anger and emotion from birth is inhibiting a mother’s opportunity to be the mother she thought she would be. Perhaps she feels disconnected from her baby or overwhelmed by motherhood. All of which makes perfect sense but leaves her feeling like there’s something wrong with her. The protective response of her body to freeze during her birth can also leave a mother feeling like she let herself or her baby down during birth, and that there is something wrong with her because she couldn’t do more to change the circumstances. Again, not something that she was overtly in control of, but that can easily be turned inward and become self-deprecating.

Shame tends to lead us to further push people away as it is hard to accept love and support when we believe we are bad or wrong. It may be that the mother doesn’t feel like she deserves support, or perhaps that she should be able to figure it out on her own.

“Shame tends to lead us to further push people away as it is hard to accept love and support when we believe we are bad or wrong.”

Breaking down barriers to joy

In reality, all women deserve support in processing and healing from birth, no matter how ecstatic, powerful or challenging their birth was. It is a major life event, the memory of which lives with us forever. Anger and shame are a perpetuating cycle, and inhibit access to an effective integration into motherhood.

As a somatic therapist, I hold space for and guide women to heal from the experiences which keep the anger stuck within them. We de-shame their experience of birth and motherhood because, in removing that shame, a major barrier to love, support and connection is also dissolved. With the right support, I not only believe but I know it is possible to find joy in motherhood..

“…all women deserve support in processing and healing from birth, no matter how ecstatic, powerful or challenging their birth was.”