A Trauma-Informed Approach to the Postpartum Season

The transformative period from pregnancy to delivery is often met with a heightened emphasis on the delivery. Determining health-care providers, birth plans, what are the safest stroller options, and then some may leave mothers and fathers-to-be filled with anticipatory anxiety and pressure to make the “perfect” choice. As I reflect on my days as a new mother, I recall the early days, what my husband and I can fondly now refer to as the “dark period” following the birth of our son. While our preparedness for our son’s birth was incredibly intentional and heart-centered, we were entirely unprepared for the toll sleep deprivation and the grief of our former life would have on us.

During this season, when attempting to seek counsel from fellow new parents, our own families, and even strangers, wisdom at times felt diluted, usually centering around the non-existent sleep we could anticipate for the next decade. I can recognize with compassion for these guides in our lives, that as humans when we experience something profoundly difficult, it can often be challenging to adequately capture our experience with our words and recall alone. Pregnancy, birth, and post-partum are both physiological and deeply spiritual experiences, capable of stirring up historical wounds and features of our own childhoods that we may not realize until we have already crossed over this pivotal threshold of initiation. Drawing from my own experience, both as a mother and as a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, specializing in trauma and attachment, I wish to provide the insights that I was longing for during this sacred time.

The body whispers before it yells Shortly after the arrival of my son, I had the unfortunate experience of developing mastitis. I was determined to address this with homeopathic remedies, which even resorted to me putting cabbage leaves all over my breasts at the guidance of my beloved midwife. What I did not consider at that time was what the symptoms of mastitis were trying to signal to my mind and actions to slow down, take greater time to rest and nurse my son and to stop trying to live at the same frequency of my pre-baby life. Later, honing the deeper awareness of body wisdom in my clinical practice, I learned through Inna Segal’s book, The Secret Language of Your Body, the mastitis was not a coincidence, but rather my body’s siren call for what Inna describes as the possible contributing factors. Mastitis she advises may arrive when we push away feelings, neglect ourselves through sacrificing our needs and wants, feel unsupported, resistant to change and being overly accommodating to others while internally suffering. My body was literally giving me the guidance necessary to take necessary actions to heal this condition. I wished I had known this connection back then as it may have allowed a greater attunement toward what my body was trying to communicate. While I wish I could say this snapped me awake, that took more time, more iterations of me becoming aware of my tendency to put others well ahead of my own needs, even when these needs became physical. I have deepened my appreciation of the incredible intuition of the body, to not bring forth symptoms erratically, but precisely in connection with the unaddressed emotional and physical impacts the body and spirit may be neglecting.

Birth may nudge you to confront aspects of yourself you may have a blindspot to It was not until the birth of my daughter, my second child, that I really honed in on something I had wished to forget. My upbringing did not afford me the practice and confidence in asking for help. I work with many women, who like me, believe that they are clearly asking for what they need and want. However, the humbling experience of having a child with a toddler underfoot really heightened my understanding that the manner in which I would ask for help would be to wait until the last possible moment, then resulting in my needing to be saved, rather than helped. Naturally, bypassing inputs of needs and wishes for an eternity can leave even the most stoic person frazzled and sputtering their ask in a quite dysregulated way. This also had the potential to leave those lovely humans, my husband, friends, co-workers perplexed and often under prepared for how they could actually support me. This would reinforce the unhelpful belief that I really could not ask for help and really should only continue to rely on my own efforts.

While difficult to admit then,  what I was blind to was that I was holding onto beliefs and behaviors that were shaped when I was very young. These beliefs told me that I had to keep myself together, that asking for help was a form of weakness or showing cracks in the real and perceived expectation of perfection. What I discovered following my second birth, was that I had in my adulthood cultivated relationships that were deeply meaningful and trustworthy, yet I was still operating from the limited perception of my child self. This discovery allowed me the greater faith in those around me to make good on their offers of help and support. This clarity also allowed me to gain the necessary practice, while clunky at first to ask more clearly and directly for what I needed.

Honor the fourth trimester My journey as a trauma specialist led me into depths of examining early attachment, human development and physiological impacts of shock and trauma on a developing nervous system. Kimberly Johnson’s work on the fourth trimester provides research supported material on the sacred nature of the trimester following the birth of a child and how our approach to this season is essential in providing the landscape for early attunement, mirroring and nervous system regulation.

Rituals surrounding the fourth trimester can be found throughout history and our evolution as a human species. Cultures prioritizing rituals, which may include 40-day or more stay-ins, surrounding mother and baby with nourishing provisions and guardianship by women and allomothers by today’s standard may feel like a modern-day luxury. Yet, these ancient and wise practices are part of all of us, as we have all come from generations of women that at one point may have prioritized this sacred time knowing intimately the value it was upholding and providing for the nervous system attunement and regulation of this sensitive season. Intentionally eliminating the demands from the outside world fosters the physiological bonding, attunement and attachment that our human species thrives upon. These practices orient the infant to profound contact with safety, with belonging and shoring up the necessary resources to feel confident to boldly step forward into the world.

I wish I had known that by taking the additional time, honoring more hours of skin-to-skin connection my body and my new baby’s body craved, welcoming nourishing foods provided by women and others in my life to regenerate life giving energy required of me, I would be both modeling and receiving the life force of deep, heart-centered connection. I look back at that season, not with regret, because we cannot fault ourselves for something we did not know yesterday, but rather, inspiration of what this ancient wisdom can afford generations to come.