Dos and Don'ts of Discussing Difficult Births
Dear Friends,
Becoming a parent (for the first or 15th time) is a transformative experience. We’re fond of telling clients that having children leaves no surface of your life untouched. Every aspect—social, emotional, physical, financial, relational, etc.—is changed when we add a new child to the mix. It is no wonder that new and expecting parents seek to connect with others who have similar experiences.
Birth stories are just one of the ways that new parents begin to process the transformation and seek connection with their community. The telling and hearing of a birth story is a way of processing, learning, healing, and connecting for teller and listener.
When our journeys are positive, this can be quite easy to do. A parent talking about how amazing their newborn smelled will get a chorus of agreement. But for people who have had a difficult or traumatic birth, sharing can come with more pitfalls—not everyone has the same experience, and many listeners won’t know how best to respond. But sharing and processing is even more important for people after a difficult birth. It is a way to make sense of the experience and find support in their community.
If you’ve been around new parents long enough, you’ve met one or two who had difficult or even traumatic birth experiences. Here’s our tips for how to support them and listen to their stories:
Do offer to talk about it (or not). Sometimes parents want to talk through what happened to them, but they feel like no one wants to listen or that it’s weird that they want to talk about it. Just making the offer to listen can open the door. Of course, if they don’t want to talk about it, we need to respect that too (even if we are curious). You could say, “I’m here to listen if you’d like to talk about it, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to.”
Don’t focus only on the outcome. Saying things like, “At least everyone is okay” or “Healthy baby, happy mama,” minimizes their actual birth experience and any lasting harm or injury they are dealing with. Often, we want to wrap up sad stories with a bow and a happy ending, but people need freedom to express their authentic experiences. In general, if you are thinking of starting a sentence with “at least…” you can just keep it to yourself.
Do be a good listener. Good listeners focus on what someone else is saying without judgment, advice, or opinions. Sometimes, it can be helpful to ask directly if someone needs to be heard, helped, or hugged right now. One important part of processing trauma is talking through the experience multiple times, so you can help just by being willing to listen as many times as they want to talk. Your full attention can be a valuable gift.
Don’t compare. It’s easy to hear a story with complications and want to share a horror story from another person you know. We might be trying to relate to their experience, but instead it can feel like we’re trying to play trauma Olympics. No one wins an award for the most pain and suffering. There’s enough compassion for hurts of all sizes and shapes, and everyone deserves empathy regardless of whether other people have it better or worse.
Do say I’m sorry that happened to you. So often, people focus on how birth affects the baby, but the mother’s experience is equally important. When a birth doesn’t go as planned, moms need to grieve the birth they didn’t have and acknowledge any harm they experienced during that birth. One way we can help is by acknowledging their pain. It can be as simple as “I’m sorry that happened to you.”
Don’t talk about next time. Saying things, “there’s always next time” implies that this birth is something to be forgotten or glossed over. People who survived a difficult birth are rarely excitedly planning for their next birth. In fact, for some of them, the first thought might be along the lines of “never again.” If or when they decide to consider a future pregnancy, it still won’t erase the experience of their previous birth.
Do validate their feelings. If someone tells you that something about their birth was hard, scary, painful, or violating, you should acknowledge those feelings and express how natural it is to feel that way. It’s okay to say, “That sounds really hard/scary/difficult/awful.”
Don’t tell them they will get over it. There’s no timeline for healing, and after a difficult birth parents should take as long as they need to recover. It’s okay to still be processing long after and saying things like “it’s time to focus on the baby,” minimizes their experience. It can be tempting to tell a parent that you or someone you know got over their experience or forgot about the worst parts of it, but everyone is on their own journey, and no one needs to feel guilty for the way they.
Do stick it out for the long haul. Unfortunately, trauma doesn’t resolve overnight, and a difficult birth sometimes means a long physical and emotional recovery. There’s no expiration date on trauma unfortunately. Offer to check back with them as time goes on. Let them know that it is okay if they are still recovering weeks/months later. You can even ask if they’ve thought about talking to a therapist to help process the experience.
Don’t offer advice. No one likes a Monday morning quarterback. Telling someone that they or their doctors should have managed something differently doesn’t change what happened. Offering opinions on how the birth went shifts the conversation from support to blame. It’s natural for humans hearing about a dangerous outcome to want to find the blame so we can avoid a similar outcome ourselves, but it isn’t helpful to someone during their own trauma.
Do offer help. After a difficult birth, parents are facing a slower recovery either from emotional exhaustion, physical impacts, or even separation from baby. Offer to swing by with some groceries, to watch any other kids, to drop off a meal, to mow the lawn, or any other annoying chores of which you can think.
Don’t correct. Don’t try to tell someone that they are wrong about how they are feeling. People say things like, “I’m sure the doctor knew what they were doing,” or “that sounds totally normal to me.” Those types of phrases imply that we know more about their experience than they know themselves. Trauma isn’t what happened; it’s how it was experienced. What might not be traumatic to one person, very well could be to another. Every person has a right to their own grief or anger about their experiences.
Do remind them they’re good parents. If birth had complications, the parents might be feeling like they should have magically known how to prevent that. Of course, they couldn’t have. It can be helpful to simply state what an excellent job they did and are doing. Saying things like, “It sounds like you were doing everything you could,” or “I can see what a great Mom you are,” can be a wonderful way to affirm that they are the best parents for their baby.
Warmly,
Kellie Wicklund, LPC, PMH-C
CEO + Clinical Director
Christina Moran
Executive Director
