Birth Trauma Or TABS
Is there a way to heal from a terrible, traumatic birth experience, post-traumatic stress or TABS? For most women Life just loses its bloom when you’ve experienced birth trauma. It’s hard to take care of your baby because you’re reminded at every moment that birth has caused this trauma. Your other children and your partner suffer because you suffer.
Women who experience TABS do suffer terribly and often for weeks, months and years. You might be terrified to get pregnant again or scared that you’ll lose your temper and unintentionally harm yourself or your baby.
Would you listen to Birthing Better families for a few minutes? All Birthing Better families who suffered from birth trauma want you to learn the skills that reduced and prevented TABS. With skills, the birth could still be challenging and sometimes traumatic but not traumatizing! That’s the difference. Skills gave us the foundation to cope, manage, work through, handle, deal with, stay on top of and in control no matter who challenging our birth.
More important Birthing Better families actually used the skills they developed to heal the past birth trauma by consciously placing their newfound skills into their birth memories. They realized that a large percentage of feeling traumatized came from not feeling in control or having the skills to cope and manage what was happening to or around them during their baby’s birth.
You can heal birth trauma
You can start to heal right now no matter how long ago or how recent your traumatic birth! You already know that the birth trauma you experienced has had a devastating impact on you and your family. Birth trauma is almost always associated with the mother feeling: blame, shame or guilt. (BTW … Birthing Better used to be known as The Pink Kit)
‘I stumbled across The Pink Kit Package as I was browsing the web. At first I couldn’t imagine that I needed to work through a childbirth preparation source after a deeply disturbing birth experience and years away from even thinking about having another child. But something moved me and I’m so grateful. I finally understood, truly understood what happened. The Pink Kit took years off my healing process’
Greta H…
‘Without The Pink Kit Package, our marriage would have fallen apart. Both of us needed to heal and we had to find out how our lack of skills contributed to what happened. We did and could do that without blaming each other.’
Joshua F…
You can feel confident about your upcoming birth rather than have a fear of childbirth pain.
Birth Stories of traumatic childbirth are often about
- Our inability to cope with the pain of childbirth.
- Everyone’s birth reaction to our pain by … our partner, birth professionals, and the institution.
- What ‘they did to me’ or ‘what they didn’t do.’
- The bewilderment or lack of adjustment to something unexpected that happened and changed an anticipated positive birth plan or outcome.
- Feeling out of control because you lack essential skills
- Confusing the changes in ‘choices’ to feeling traumatized
- Lacking skills to manage the impact of feeling disrespected, uninformed or ignored
Whether you are pregnant or not heal TABS now
- Gain insight into how your Birthing Better skills could have helped you to have a positive birth and avoid some of the birth trauma … even that helps you heal.
- Prepare your body now for a future pregnancy AND gain incredible confidence … whether you’re pregnant or not.
- Gather childbirth skills that YOU know will adapt to the unexpected in childbirth … so often the case.
- Help your partner also heal.
We all know there are too many traumatic Birth Stories.
You can HEAL your birth trauma or TABS. There is too much pressure on pregnant women to have a perfect birth experience. Give your family a healed mother. Don’t wait. Don’t live one more day with childbirth blame, shame, and guilt.
Don’t wait one more day to start YOUR healing. Start today, RIGHT NOW!
‘I absolutely KNEW I could have had a vaginal birth, but the doctor told my husband that both our baby and I would have died due to an persistent posterior presentation. I just KNEW that wasn’t true. We fought for the next few years. When I got pregnant, we discovered The Pink Kit Package. Life totally changed. I understood my body, what had happened AND what we could do to change the outcome. We gave birth to a baby 2 pounds bigger and very easily.’
Nancy and Peter N …
Childbirth is such a unique Life experience
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) usually occurs when we feel powerless, don’t see the trauma coming and aren’t able to adjust to the situation at the time.
- As a mother, we always remember the births of our children.
- Childbirth is a BIG Time important human event.
- Pregnancy and childbirth is the gateway to parenting.
Childbirth in all cultures is treated as a special time in a pregnant woman and baby’s life. Women giving birth and who have experienced a traumatic birth experience (TABS) can be scarred emotionally as well as physically. Yet, as humans, we have a great capacity to heal.
We can reduce birth trauma or TABS
Since the 1980s the rise of women experiencing the blame, shame, guilt, disappointment, anger from their birth experience has shot right up. For those of us who gave birth in the 1960s-early 1980s, very few people expressed feeling traumatized by birth. Sure some of us had very traumatic births, suffering, and loss. We expected the standards of care … all the assessments, monitoring and procedures that were part of the ‘evidence-based practice’ of that Time.
We went to the hospital, sometimes our partner was permitted but often we were alone or in a ward with other women in labor. Staff was not always nice and the hospital environment was sterile yet we accepted this as part of the experience … much like a dentist appointment. You don’t like going to the dentist but it’s a necessity. The birth was much like that for that generation of Women. However, there was a balance … women of the 60s-70s were skilled via Lamaze or The Bradley Method. That means they focused on using skills to cope throughout birth. Many Women of that generation felt proud of their accomplishments even though they didn’t feel good about the place of birth or how they were treated.
What changed? The promotion of Birth Plans. Birth Plans are great and horrible. It’s wonderful to believe you can choose the birth you want yet there’s no way to know what your birth will be like. Immediately we saw more women feeling traumatized because all their efforts to plan their birth failed and they lacked skills.
Because skills have been actively dismissed by famous natural childbirth authors since the 1980s fewer and fewer women are skills, fathers aren’t and Birth Plans are the apparent pathway to the birth you want. Unskilled women, unskilled men, and reliance on planning a birth like a party, vacation or wedding have led to the phenomenal increase in perceived birth trauma … it’s real when someone doesn’t respect your ‘choices’. It’s real when someone at your birth touches you roughly or without your permission. It’s real when you are given or done to things you don’t want and aren’t informed. It’s real when you feel disengaged and powerless.
But we experienced the same things in the 60s/70s yet came away from our births feeling incredibly powerful because we were skilled. If we’re serious about healing, preventing or reducing birth trauma then we absolutely must grow skilled birthing families for every single type of birth!
We can never plan a birth, it unfolds. We can, however, skilfully work through every moment of our baby’s birth when we have skills and choose to use them … particularly when a birth is unfolding in unexpected ways.
Birthing Better skills were developed by moms and dads in the early 1970s in the US and used by many thousands globally in all types of birth. Birthing Better online birthing classes are housed in Common Knowledge Trust.
