Birth Trauma -“I feel like a zombie!!”

A traumatic birth experience can leave you not only feeling battered and bruised but also detached from your body and your old self. Journalist Leah McLaren said she, ‘felt weirdly detached, like a zombie shuffling through the motions’ when writing about her traumatic birth experience for the Guardian newspaper a couple of years ago.
Feeling this way is particularly distressing at a time when you want to bond with your baby. It’s important to know that you’re not alone in your experience, The Birth Trauma Association estimate that over 200,000 women feel traumatised by childbirth and develop undiagnosed and untreated symptoms of PTSD.
It’s important that we find ways to help and support women who can feel their experience is overlooked so long as their baby is healthy and they are physically patched up. Disregarding a mother’s experience misses the essential point that the wellbeing of a new mum and her baby- cannot be so easily separated.
At our small group sessions we will help you understand how trauma impacts your whole system and how you can do some simple things to help your system recover.

Trauma Isn’t Just In Your Head

When a person has experienced trauma, whether that is an acute event or ongoing chronic life stressors, it can change their physiology –  including resetting the brain’s alarm system – causing it to become focused on survival above all else. The areas of the brain that send out signals of alarm to protect us from threat become sensitised and easily activated at the slightest sense of danger. At the same time the body is programmed to secrete large amounts of stress hormones, leading to unpleasant emotional responses, troubling physical sensations and  impulsive or even aggressive behavioural responses that are seemingly out of control.

Feeling out of control in this way is frightening and can lead to a sense of being fatally flawed or damaged beyond repair – which is one reason why survivors of trauma can feel stuck and unable to move beyond their past experiences and live fully in the present. Life becomes an exercise in managing threat rather than an adventure of new experiences. Research has also shown that trauma compromises the brain area that communicates the physical embodied sensations of being alive in the present moment(1), which means that experiences like standing by the ocean or feeling the sun on your face as you take in the moment, can feel impossible to trauma survivors because their hyper-vigilant sensitised brains are always scanning the environment for threat. They may not be aware that this is what is happening, they just know they can’t relax and that life has lost the joy and spontaneity that it once had. It also makes daily living tiring, stressful and a challenge rather than a pleasure, as any encounter may trigger traumatic reactions. It also means that trauma survivors can’t just change their minds and decide to get on with life because their physiology won’t let them. This is why it is important to include therapies that work with and support the body when recovering from trauma.

The good news is:

“New brain pathways can be formed through repetitive exposure to new information and through practising movement patterns and acquiring new skills” (Robert Scaer – 8 Keys to Brain Body Balance)

This is true for stroke survivors and trauma survivors, as the brain is plastic and responds well to movement interventions that allow the body to process traumatic reactions and experience defensive physical actions that were often denied at the time of the trauma.

Through utilising the body’s own resources and receiving the right support it is possible to move past difficult or traumatic  life experiences and lead a full and happy life.

Tummy Time Stress

Is Tummy Time Stressing Everyone Out???

Tummy time has become part of the standard advice given to new parents but it can be anything but standard when your baby just won’t tolerate it even for a few seconds. The very idea of it can cause new parents to break out in a sweat and create a lot of stress for babies too.  Some babies need a little more support to help them tolerate being on their tummy on a flat surface and holding their head up against gravity. At Encounter Baby we will introduce you to techniques that can help with this struggle and even turn it into a fun time of connection with your baby.

Top tip…

A good alternative starting point for tummy time is to start with your baby on your chest or tummy and relax back in a chair of sofa. Your baby has a natural fascination with human faces and will be drawn to look up to catch your eye or check out your face. In the early weeks of life a baby’s vision is limited to around 20cm or about the distance from your nipple to your eyes, interestingly, so lying on your chest is a good position to be able to see you. In this position they also receive a comforting touch input from your body that is much more reassuring and comforting than the floor or a play mat. Research has shown that when we combine touch with any other sensory or motor experience more connections are made in the brain.

Don’t worry that this position isn’t “real” tummy time – it still is, and your baby is still resisting gravity and beginning to strengthen the muscles in their neck, shoulders, arms and trunk, as well as organising their nervous system.

There can of course be other factors that cause problems with tummy time, and if this is the case, at the sessions we will be able to help you identify what may be behind your child’s struggle.

Why is Tummy time considered so important?

Put briefly, it helps organise the nervous system and provides foundational development of the muscle groups and motor pathways for rolling over, pulling up and sitting. It also stimulates hidden systems such as the vestibular, which is key in balance and is also linked to the visual and auditory system functions.

You may find the video on this site helpful  – https://pathways.org/topics-of-development/tummy-time-2/