1 in 3 women in Australia experience birth trauma and about 1 in 25 of these women will go on to develop PTSD. Even without a formal diagnosis of PTSD, the impact of a traumatic birth can influence the mother’s emotional health and coping well into the postnatal period and can impact on her relationship with her baby and others. Mothers are often triggered hearing about other women’s birthing stories or seeing other women delighting in their pregnancy, birth or postnatal experience. They might experience distress or flashbacks to their own experience, and can remain hypervigilant even after the distressing event has passed. Women may find that they avoid looking at things that remind them of their birth or they might begin to avoid people, places or things that remind them of that time.
The good news is that there is treatment available for birth trauma and it’s highly effective - that therapy is call EMDR.
EMDR stands for Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing and is an evidence-based treatment for trauma and distress. EMDR is a holistic therapy that works with both psychological and body-based symptoms. EMDR allows us to reactivate memory and forces the brain to reprocess this material though bilateral stimulation, with the coregulation and support of your therapist. By leaning into the processing experience, the client works their way through the different layers of their traumatic experience and the level of activation in the body decreases, and often the intensity of the memory fades. The memory becomes reprocessed from an episodic memory into your long-term narrative memory, meaning that after processing, you can retell your experience without feeling like you are reliving it all over again. Clients often report feeling lighter and being able to gain new insights and understandings about themselves through this process.
Is it safe to do EMDR in pregnancy?
Yes, it is safe, and highly recommended as an untreated mother may have high levels of cortisol in her body. EMDR reduces distress and therefore reduces the baby’s exposure of cortisol.
Is it only for a traumatic birth delivery?
No, trauma in the perinatal space might be a traumatic birth, but it is much broader than that and encompasses the trauma during pregnancy, delivery and postnatal period. Sometimes women will experience distressing or traumatic experiences during their pregnancy such as a threatened miscarriage or a diagnosis for their developing baby. Other women might experience a straightforward pregnancy and delivery, but then experience distress in the postnatal period, either with feeding or settling issues or their own health. EMDR processes distress, so this is any situation in which the women felt emotionally activated or distressed - it is not defined by what society considers to be distressing.
Dr Kirsten Finn offers EMDR for Birth Trauma
At Restored Wellbeing, Dr Kirsten Finn offers EMDR therapy for women who have experienced trauma or distress during their experience of pregnancy, birth or in the early postpartum.