 Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder
Sheila Kitzinger reveals some truths about what life
after birth can be like for some new mums.
After the Vietnam War soldiers on both sides who had not suffered
any physical injury often became distressed. They had panic attacks
and flashbacks to terrible events they had witnessed, but which they
were unable to do anything about. The diagnosis "post traumatic
stress disorder" was invented.
The same thing can happen after a birth in which a woman felt she
had no control over what people did to her and was just a "body
on the table". She is alert, irritable and panic-stricken. She
may feel as if she has been raped. And, as so often with rape, she
believes that somehow it must have been her fault. The birth
experience goes round and round in her head like a video set on
"replay". It cannot be switched off.
For these women birth was a kind of torture. They could not get the
information they needed to make choices between alternatives, and felt
that they had no control over what was done to them. They were
disempowered in a very important event in their lives. They feel
terribly alone. They may fear that they are going mad.
This can happen even with a so-called ‘normal’ birth. But it
occurs most often with high-tech births: when there are obstetric
interventions like induction and revving up the uterus with drugs to
speed labour. Electronic foetal monitoring often means that the woman
is made to lie down and keep still instead of swinging and rocking her
hips. There is bound to be more pain when she cannot move freely. An
episiotomy (a cut), a forceps or ventouse (vacuum extraction)
delivery, or an unplanned Caesarean section, may make a woman feel as
if she is being treated like an object on a conveyor belt.
Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD for short) is different from
depression. Anti-depressant drugs do not help, and can even make it
worse. Many women who are haunted by what has to be done to them in
childbirth are treated by GPs with anti-depressant drugs. What they
really need is to be able to talk with someone who understands, a
person who does not try to explain or justify the treatment they
received, or to criticise them and the way they feel about what
happened to them, and who knows how to listen reflectively.
Taking Action
- Ask for your case notes from the hospital. If you get on well
with your GP or with a midwife in the practice go through them
with him or her, so that you find out what went wrong, and why
these things were done to you. Some hospitals have a Birth
Afterthoughts service and the midwife will come to your home to
let you talk through the labour and link your experience with the
notes.
- Write your version of what happened, and how you felt about it.
It will probably be very different from the hospital version. If
it is hard to do this, write it as a story about someone else.
- Contact Birth
Crisis, who can put you in touch by phone with a
member of its network who is there to listen, understand, and help
you find the power within yourself to handle this distress.
Where to next?
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