Birth story processing
Birth challenges and changes us.
Birth is a profoundly transformative experience. It’s not just the moment where we bring our babies into the world—it’s also one where we come face-to-face with our greatest strengths and, sometimes, our deepest fears.
Your birth story likely includes moments of wonder, power, fear, strength, and pain. It may have also included moments that were overwhelming, intense, and even traumatic. Because we so quickly transition from giving birth to taking care of a newborn, we rarely have the time to process our experience and the effect it’s had on us—for months, years, and even decades. But your birth matters, and you deserve the space to process, integrate, and release it.
Processing your birth story can be a healing and important way to honor your transition into parenthood.
It’s also an evidence-based practice: processing a difficult or challenging birth experience with another person has been shown to decrease experiences of trauma, self-blame, depression, and stress after birth.
About Birth Story Medicine
I am trained in Birth Story Medicine, which was developed by Pam England, author of Birthing From Within. Birth Story Medicine helps you process and reclaim your birth story as early as 6 weeks postpartum, using techniques including internal family systems, archetypes, solutions-focused counseling, and somatic practice.
Fundamental to the practice of Birth Story Medicine is the belief that stories are living, evolving entities. Events don’t have meaning on their own—they take on the meaning we give to them. As a result, the meaning of an experience can change as the storyteller and story evolve, providing the opportunity for healing as we grow.
Each of us contain more than a single storytelling voice when it comes to our birth story. Instead, different parts within us each have their own story to tell about what happened, and each seek their own healing and resolution.
My role is to hold compassionate space for you and your story, deeply listen to what happened and how you experienced it, and speak to the unmet needs you may still be carrying from your birth experience.
How do I know if I can benefit from this?
Many of us are carrying birth stories that are not fully resolved. Birth rarely goes according to plan—sometimes it exceeds our expectations, and sometimes it leaves behind expectations or hopes that go unfulfilled. Here are some clues that may let you know that you’re carrying a birth story that is asking for healing:
You struggle to talk about your birth experience;
You find yourself tuning out or dissociating when others talk about their birth experiences;
Hearing about someone else’s positive birth experience makes you angry or sad;
You leave key details out of the way you talk about your birth;
Parts of your birth story come to mind all the time;
Or, you can’t seem to keep the story in—you want to tell it to anyone who will listen, sometimes at inopportune or inappropriate moments.
These are all signals from yourself that the story is still seeking a resolution. Birth story processing can help.
Birth story processing is for anyone who has been present for, or witnessed, a birth. That means birthing parents, supporting parents, pregnant women processing a previous birth, birth workers, or other family members who may have been present for a birth.
What if I need support in the first six weeks?
Birth Story Medicine is designed for 6 weeks or later after birth. But, sometimes birth knocks the wind out of us and we feel we need support right away. For debriefing a difficult birth story, I am trained in Birth Story Debriefing by Dancy Perinatal.
The first 4-6 weeks after birth are a very important window of time, when the brain is still processing the initial memory. Debriefing a birth story in a safe and empathetic environment during this window can help the brain create healthy memory formation (an integrated memory of a difficult experience), instead of traumatic memory formation (a memory that continues to feel emotionally charged, or like it's happening in the present tense even years into the future). Intervening in this early window can have as much as a 70% chance in reducing the likelihood of experiencing ongoing trauma after birth.
If you’ve experienced a challenging birth and would like a compassionate, trauma-informed space to process it, I can meet virtually with you in early postpartum for birth story debriefing. These are 60- to 90-minute sessions where you share the story of your birth experience in a safe and empathetic environment, and we practice some simple techniques to help the brain process it as a healthy memory. If at the 6 week mark you would like additional support, we can meet again for a Birth Story Medicine session to help soften and work through any specific moments or snapshots from the memory that feel difficult.
Whether an experience is stored as trauma is not decided by what happened—it is decided by whether or not your nervous system got what it needed to process the experience.
Memory is not static. Every time we access a memory in a supportive environment, we have the opportunity to infuse that memory with safety and empathy.
How and when are sessions held?
Sessions are 60-90 minutes, and happen virtually over Zoom.
You can seek out birth story processing as early as two weeks after birth, and as late as decades after. If you are six weeks or more postpartum, I use Birth Story Medicine to help process and integrate your birth story. If you reach out for support in the immediate postpartum window (2-6 weeks postpartum), I offer birth story debriefing, a therapeutically-informed approach that supports healthy memory formation and can significantly reduce the likelihood of developing ongoing trauma.
Because this is a vulnerable and important time for you, please be sure that you are alone and in a private, comfortable environment for our conversation. This means you should ensure childcare for your baby or young children.
Sessions are priced at $120. However, when it comes to unresolved birth trauma, your healing is paramount. I do not want cost to be an obstacle to those seeking support. A sliding scale is available upon request.