How to recognize PN trauma

Thousands of women suffer from postnatal trauma after childbirth in the UK but it is unrecognized or misdiagnosed. There is a lack of social awareness, training for the medical staff and treatment for the survivors. A description of the symptoms is below and we hope that it will help health professionals to understand this condition in a better way and make an accurate diagnose.

If you think you have been traumatized by childbirth please check the list below and contact your GP.

Like a video tape of the birth being played on anytime anywhere and it comes suddenly without a warning and you want to escape, scream, hit yourself, disappear, you feel dying again and find difficult to breath.

You wish you are dead; sometimes your thoughts are about taking an overdose or similar actions to finish your life but you really want to live...you just want to someone to listen to you without any judgement.

These are so vivid that you wake up with a heart beat acceleration frightened because someone tried to kill you in your dreams…but you escape…again. Therefore you prefer not to sleep or only sleep a few hours.

You looked depressed but in many cases you are not really depressed or suffer from depression, it just comes when you think about your future and there is no way out…and then you cry because there is no one to understand what you went through

There are no feelings inside you; there is disbelief at the atrocities the health professionals have carried out against you and your body; you feel that you are a character in a film.

There is an unconscious, and sometimes conscious, rejection of your baby as a constant reminder of your traumatic birth. It is so difficult and sometimes impossible to love your baby although deep inside you know you love him/her but cannot express those feelings. Every time your baby gets ill, you think she/he will die and you behave as though it will happen.

There is so much anger against those you treated you so badly that you could kill them with your own hands. But before you do that you want answers to your many questions about the decisions they took over your head…they need to give you a very good explanation otherwise you kill them time after time in your thoughts. And all these actions are only in your thoughts.

You feel guilty for not measuring up to what the health professionals want from you: breast feeding, bonding with your baby and keeping all appointments.

There is no mother who can understand you when you express your feelings to them. Nor can any member of your family comprehend the deep sadness, anger and life of hell you are living. Therefore you isolate yourself from mothers, friends and family….and most dangerous of all: you isolate yourself from doctors, midwives and nurses.

There is no way you will get pregnant again, just the thought makes you sweat in fear. Therefore your sex life is non existent. Please see Tokophobia

If you are experiencing most of these symptoms, go to your doctor and explain them to her. Be sure that she knows about postnatal trauma and doesn’t get confused with postnatal depression. Contact us if you need more help.
Extracted from , by Martha Jesty