This is a photo of me after our 2nd baby, following all the 2nd baby advise, like giving the first child a present from the new baby!
My recovery from my first birth didn’t look like this. I was on my own, in the recovery ward with a baby up in intensive care, taking in the shock of an emergency c-section, while I listened to new mothers with their babies around me.
There is so much that was traumatic about that time, it has taken years to admit that it was difficult and that I struggled. I could tell you a long and emotional story about that birth and having a child who isn’t well. Talking about that and sharing our stories has it’s place, but today I want to tell you about how I learned to cope with it.
Healing the Body to Heal the Mind
When we experience a traumatic event, the body remembers the event often better than the mind can. When I trained as a yoga teacher, I also trained in trauma sensitive yoga. When yoga is adapted to take trauma into consideration, it helps the person practicing increase their body awareness in a safe space. It also helps them move from “fight and flight” to “rest and digest” – people who have experienced trauma often end up stuck in fight and flight, especially when faced with a situation that reminds them of their trauma.
My 3rd child was born 3 days into the first lockdown – 25th March 2020. Unfortunately we ended up back in special care (just for a few days) but this time I was on my own. No family could visit. I remember sitting and watching my baby boy, with a cannula in his perfect little hand, wondering how on earth I was back in special care.
My breath work and my amazing husband helped me, I shed a few tears, that was to be expected. but I had built up a strength within me to cope, I could better control my anxiety and knew how to bring myself back to the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest).
It’s now my passion to work with parents to be, who might have experienced a trauma of their own. This could be the trauma of loss, IVF or the trauma of a previous birth. I teach these birthers, to ask empowering questions, to feel in control and part of the decisions that might be made about their birth and their body and to learn the techniques of breath work and yoga to “heal the body to heal the mind”.
One lady after a yoga session said “I always feel like I carry a weight around with me, after these classes the weight is gone”.