My dissertation for my homeopathic accreditation was Understanding Birth Trauma and this was focused solely on the effect on the baby rather than the mother.
There is plenty to read about the trauma of birth to a mother but less so when it comes to the effect on the baby which is strange because after all we have all experienced our own birth!
The best quote to sum this up is by Bradford Shank:
The mother acutely aware of the pain
Of childbirth
Soon forgets
The child
But dimly aware at the time
Remembers all his life
The shock of being born
I’ve recently had a very interesting case where a young lady is experiencing high anxiety which has got worse since a teenager. We know that her birth was very challenging and traumatic for her and I have been explaining to her that her birth was her first experience of stress and that this ‘stress response’ at the time has now created a blue print for anytime she feels stressed.
Whilst the key issue rising up is abandonment, it is linked to the stress of not being able to breathe when she was first born and a number of other birth-related circumstances.
With knowledge can come an acceptance that ‘we are not going mad’ but that there are reasons for how we react, and often, these reasons we are completely unaware of. By unpacking some of the birth trauma, I do believe it helps release some of the embedded blueprint set up at birth.