Expecting 411: Therapist for Birth Trauma

[sste]

Although most pregnancies go exceedingly well, based on my recent delivery of DC #2, I def. think there should be a page or box or some sort on When Things Don't Go According to Plan.

What I discovered after my own non-catastrophic but traumatic delivery is that there are therapists who specialize in traumatic birth/birth loss/pregnancy loss/infertility. My hospital was fairly enlightened and included this in my discharge planning with a little prompting from me. A good therapist may be the most important part of your recovery - - I am working with someone now who I really like and it has been incredibly helpful. And notably, they not only deal with birth loss and major emergencies, I think most would also be very good people to talk with if you found a non-emergency c-section very upsetting (I did with #1) or had a bad/disrespectful delivery experience.

Someone looking for one should ask their OB, ask their friends, talk to their insurer (often these therapists will list infertility as a specialty but if they do infertility they often also deal with birth trauma), and also google using terms like "therapist infertility" and "health psychologist birth reproduction" etc.

HTH

[DebbieJ]

Agreed. I had a crash c-section with DS2 (birth did NOT go according to plan AT ALL) and am starting to work through it with a therapist now. There needs to be more awareness of this.

[momtobeoverseas]

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[ThreeofUs]

I think sste is right, as well. I went through a horrible experience with DS1, and really needed to know this information.

It took me years to work through the trauma by myself; I really should have talked with someone.