An approach that’s as unique and individual as you are.
Everyone’s birth experience is different. Trauma or distress is never caused by one thing, it’s often a build up of several factors intersecting with previous life experiences, expectations and personal preferences. Someone else might have the same experience as you and be fine. Your birth experience might look great on paper but you might be left wondering why you feel so upset about it. I think it’s really important that we open up the conversation around birth trauma and also distress that stops short of actual trauma. It’s ok not to be ok, and there should be a great deal more support for people to process their birth experiences.
This is Jessica’s soul debrief story.
“I had a Soul Birth Debrief with Alison while pregnant with my second, two years after my first was born. It was prompted by a visit to the hospital where my daughter was born which brought on cold sweats and flashbacks to moments in my first labour upon going through the door, which made me realise I was repressing painful, difficult feelings.
Allowing the feelings that I’d successfully repressed till then to actually be felt, putting them into words, and saying them out loud was so scary, but Alison gave me space to talk about how I felt. I had tried to talk to people about it before, but this was the first time I actually felt listened to and heard! And my feelings felt validated. It was so soul cleansing to feel I could speak freely, uninhibited by any worry of judgement. Getting it all out changed it from a jumble of difficult, painful feelings that I stumbled over into something I could express coherently out loud, which meant I could address my fears productively. This was a massive help in communicating with my midwives.
Alison gave me a written debrief, which left me in happy tears, and I’ve set it aside to re-read anytime difficult feelings around birth pop back up. In it she made some useful, non-pushy suggestions that further empowered me to take tangible steps toward addressing my fears and feelings. We also did some breathing and yoga work specific to some of my issues. And a visualisation that I felt relaxed enough to actually let my mind go, which resulted in finding some mantras that actually hold meaning for me. Both of these things have always felt forced to me when I’ve tried them in the past!
I’ve learned a lot about myself and what my version of relaxed and calm looks and feels like, and I feel much more confident ahead of giving birth again. I don’t think it would be possible to overstate how much of a positive transformative change this has made!”
What is a Soul Birth Debrief and why might I need one?
“Shame dies when stories are told in safe places” – Ann Voskamp
As a society we are very bad at what to do when things go wrong with birth. We don’t know how to talk about it so we say “the baby is healthy and that’s all the matters”. It’s more complex than that. Parents matter too. Sometimes things don’t go to plan. We need to be able to talk and to have time and space to heal.
This is why I offer Soul Birth Debriefing, a two-part process to release feelings of shame, guilt and grief and let go of distress and trauma that are being physically held in your body. If you’re noticing that you’re thinking about the birth a lot and it’s upsetting you, you feel angry, confused, like something that happened was your fault, you’re having trouble sleeping, having nightmares or flashbacks, you could benefit from speaking to someone. You don’t have to go on feeling like this, you can find a way to feel more at peace.
A safe space, a weight lifted
In the first session, we get comfortable and make sure you feel really safe, and then you tell your story.
As Jessica told her story, a weight visibly lifted from her shoulders and she looked physically different by the end, lighter and happier.
I reflect back my understanding and any observations, which can help reframe things. In Jessica’s case, she felt she didn’t cope well with pain and was unable to relax enough. What I saw was a warrior woman who coped brilliantly with a challenging 45 hour birth.
I also invite you to notice where you feel sensations in your body, particularly at the points where the story gets hard to tell, where it’s upsetting. For Jessica, it was a classic bracing response felt in her arms and pelvic floor. She was literally bracing herself against some of the memories.
We can’t change what happened…but we can change how we carry it into the future
Most useful for Jessica was to understand that her experience was real and valid – her birth was difficult, it was painful, it wasn’t because she didn’t prepare well or because she did anything wrong. This allowed her to let go of her feelings of guilt and shame and be gentle with herself.
We can’t change what happened, but we can understand it, accept it and release any sense of shame and blame around it. Your birth experience will always be part of who you are, woven into the fabric of your soul. How you feel about it is important. Jessica hadn’t spoken much about her experience because she felt ashamed. If only she’d been better at hypnobirthing or been able to relax more, tried harder…
This simply isn’t true. There is no perfect pregnancy, perfect birth, perfect parent. Birth is a deep soul experience, so what happens can hit right to the heart of who we are. We are blown wide open, intensely vulnerable, evolving into a new stage, a new way of being, as a parent and this can lead us to question everything we thought we knew about ourselves.
But we are still who we always were, just with some new identities and experiences woven in. I love to see the uniqueness of people and how this plays out in their experiences and choices when birthing. Jessica is a curious, intelligent woman with an interesting career in health science. She doesn’t like baths and she does like evidence. She felt like she had to abandon some parts of who she was to fit in with the idea of a “perfect” birth including using a pool but this really didn’t suit her.
Moving forward with confidence
In the second session, we look at how to move forward. For Jessica, we talked through her birth plans, including looking at alternative places for birth as her recent visit to the hospital where she had her daughter had triggered flashbacks. I suggested some further treatment she could explore with specialist therapists for that, but with little time before Baby Two was due, this might have to wait until afterwards.
Jessica decided to discuss pain relief with her midwives ahead of time, to be clear that she would prefer not to be offered pain relief and to try other techniques first, but if she asks for it, she would like to be assured it will be given.
As evidence and scientific understanding are especially important to Jessica, I suggested she focus on what we know about oxytocin and what promotes it – calm, quiet, dark, low voices, low lights. Trying different positions to help the baby move through the pelvis could help. I suggested some essential oils can be helpful for relaxation and pain relief, and I recommended a chat with a qualified practitioner. Hot and cold compresses on the lower back and lower abdomen can help too as can moving around freely as you wish. To keep energy up, teaspoons of honey or sweets like jelly babies are good if you don’t feel like eating. Also bananas if you can tolerate something a bit more solid. Ice chips are great for dry mouths and nausea. We agreed she should probably give the pool a miss this time!
A really important part of the second session is working with a mantra affirmation (“sankalpa” in yoga). Jessica says “One of the things I found super useful for moving forward with confidence that we did was the visualisation and the mantra, I ended up saying that during every contraction – I can, I am , I believe, until I couldn’t talk anymore and then I said it in my head. I think I’m going to use it for future difficult situations too.”
Take the first steps
Curious about the process, think that you might find it beneficial but not sure if you are ready? Get in touch so that I can answer your questions about how your soul debrief might work.