How EMDR Helped Me Heal From Birth Trauma

🛑 TW: birth trauma
Almost 6 years ago, I thought I was going to die during childbirth.

After having a healthy and uneventful pregnancy, I was diagnosed with severe pre-eclampsia.

I remember asking the nurse, “Am I going to die?”

The nurse said, “If this was 100 years ago and you were giving birth in a field, yes. But you aren’t, and we are going to take great care of you.”

While the moment of my daughter’s birth felt like absolute perfection, it felt quickly soiled when the doctor told me I was hemorrhaging.

I remember the rush of people in the room. I remember the concerned faces. I remember the nurse saying, “This poor woman.”

I remember looking at my daughter and husband - my whole world - and fearing I would be leaving them.

When we were discharged from the hospital, I felt terrified. I constantly checked my blood pressure. I feared something bad would happen to me or my baby.

I pushed on and pretended I was fine. However, after I returned to work - in a building right across the street from where I had my traumatic birth - I began experiencing PTSD symptoms.

I kept trying to push myself to be ‘fine’, until I couldn’t anymore. I took a leave of absence from work and immediately started working with an Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist.

What I learned in my own EMDR therapy changed my life, personally and professionally.
Prior to becoming a parent, I prided myself as being a strong, unshakable person… and then birth trauma shook me to my core.
💔 I felt broken.
💔 I felt powerless.
I masked it well. Until I couldn’t anymore.
💖And Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapy helped me find hope and healing.
It was in my EMDR sessions where I realized:
✨ All the positive things that happened in my labor and delivery.
➡️ How my husband and I had so many laughs together while binge-watching Brooklyn 99 during labor.
➡️ How, despite having an induced labor with pre-eclampsia, I was still able to have a vaginal birth.
➡️ How, because I was very healthy at birth, I didn’t require a blood transfusion after the hemorrhage.
✨ I was also able to imagine my current self going back to myself in labor, letting her know she will live and she will have a beautiful life with her baby.
➡️ Doing this practice helped me update my memory, letting it know that it is over, and I am healthy and SAFE.
➡️ I was also able to thank my past self for listening to her intuition and advocating for herself by having her blood pressure checked. I also let her know she has continued to advocate for herself since.
✨ EMDR also helped me connect a lot of other things in my life, and how my birth and postpartum traumas echoed other traumas in my life; but those are stories for another day.
❤️ I went on to get certified in perinatal mental health and in EMDR.
❤️ I now help other people overcome their birth and postpartum traumas, and - in many cases - reclaim their birth and postpartum experiences.
If you feel you experienced birth and/or postpartum traumas…
🔵 You are not alone. You are not to blame. With help, you will be well.
🔵 Call or text @postpartumsupportinternational at 800-944-4773. You never need a diagnosis to ask for help.
🔵 Download the Connect by PSI App
🔵 Call or text the National Maternal Mental Health Hotline at 1-833-852-6262
🔵 Visit postpartum.net for additional programs and resources.