Birth Trauma Therapy

Healing From Difficult Pregnancies and Births

Processing Perinatal Trauma

Birth Trauma Therapy involves a therapeutic space for you to safely share your past pregnancy or birth experiences. Birth is a multi-faceted transformative experience which can have enduring impacts throughout our life, whether we are giving birth to a baby, a child being born, or partners and support people present at a birth. Birth can be experienced as a beautiful initiation and transformation, evoking feelings of power, love and awe. Birth can also be a profoundly painful, disempowering, and life shattering or traumatic experience, giving rise to waves of grief, loss, shame, guilt, anger, fear…. All birthing experiences deserve a listening heart so that you may feel safe and supported to share your birth story.

Traumatic pregnancy or birth experiences can happen in many different ways. Often it is not the particular experience or intervention that occurs which makes an experience traumatic, but it is our inner experience of feeling overwhelmed, unsafe, terrified, disempowered, lacking choice and trust in our decisions, physically or emotionally violated, betrayed, abandoned, not heard, not seen or felt in our unique experience of birth. You may have experienced the fear of nearly dying or your baby in ‘distress’, or as a support person experiencing the fear of your partner nearly dying during the birth of your baby. You may have felt numbness, loss, grief, guilt, anger, relief, when your baby was taken away at birth, or you may have experienced losing your baby too soon, e.g. miscarriage or stillbirth. You may have felt ok or happy initially to have a healthy baby when they first arrived, but all of the focus was on caring and tending to your baby and you had to put aside the processing of your own difficult feelings, or no one asked you how you were feeling inside.

There are many ways pregnancy and birth can be experienced as difficult or traumatic, all experiences and feelings are welcome when seeking support with an initial Birth Trauma Support Session or ongoing Birth Trauma Therapy sessions.

Birth and Perinatal Trauma Therapy Services

Who can benefit from Birth Trauma Therapy

• Anyone who has experienced a traumatic pregnancy or birth, or emotional challenges during pregnancy, labour and birth, or in the post-partum period

• Partners or support people who want to process their experience of being present at a traumatic birth

• Anyone with a previous history of a difficult birth, miscarriage or baby loss

• Anyone with a baby or babies born prematurely who experienced challenges of bonding and early life in a hospital setting

• Initial separation from baby at birth, or challenges with bonding or feeding due to difficult birth and recovery from birth

• Constant thinking or ruminating about your birthing experience and wondering if it could have been different

• Not knowing who to talk to about your birth experience or whether you have a right to speak up about what happened

• Difficult emotions and feelings arising since your birth experience (e.g. guilt, shame, anger, rage, fear, sadness, grief, feeling confused, feeling stuck) and finding it hard to share your experience with others who understand

• Experiencing other potential signs of trauma such as: difficulty sleeping, nightmares or flashbacks, heightened sensory responses or feeling hypervigilant and anxious, intrusive or relentless thoughts, feeling tearful or depressed, dissociated or numb, losing weight, changes in desire to eat, feeling alone and isolated in your experience of motherhood

• If you have a history of diagnosed mental health challenges, or have been diagnosed with post-partum depression/anxiety, post-partum psychosis, post traumatic stress, or other mood/thought related mental health conditions

• Worried or concerned about how the birth affected your baby or child, wondering whether they are carrying trauma from their birth experience

• Past experiences of sexual abuse and trauma surfacing in birth or in the aftermath of birth

• Difficulties or pain with sexual intimacy due to previous difficult birth experience

• If you have had a previous difficult or traumatic birth and are considering conceiving another child, or are pregnant and currently experiencing fear or worry about the birth

• If you are wanting to process and understand your own birth experience into the world as a baby, and learn the impacts of perinatal trauma on physiology and your psyche as an adult

• Knowing your own birth into the world was difficult or traumatic and wanting to prepare for a different experience when birthing your own child

Healing Birth Trauma Practitioner

Rose Skerten is a Certified Healing Birth Practitioner with the following qualifications and training

Perinatal psychology, birth physiology, and trauma training

Philosophy and Approach

Rose is committed to providing safe and transformative support for those who have experienced birth trauma. She believes healing is a personal experience where we discover, with the support of others, that we have an innate capacity to heal and journey towards trust and wholeness in our heart and body. Rose draws on her experience of treating in the field of pregnancy, fertility and women’s health acupuncture. She particularly enjoys working alongside mothers/caregivers and their babies in the early years of life to help with the emotional processing of birth trauma and support the emotional, embodied, right-brain hemisphere attunement of mother and baby. Rose holds an awareness of the transformative primal power of birth, the forces of life and death in the birth experience, and an understanding of the range of emotions and deeply impactful experiences that frequently occur during the liminal space of birth, including: near-death experiences, non-ordinary states of consciousness, spiritual and trans-personal experiences.

Rose’s practice is informed by modern neuroscience in early infant attachment and right hemisphere brain development for long-term physical and mental health, Stanislav Grof’s psychotherapeutic work around perinatal matrices, perinatal psychology and attachment/sensory play approaches to healing infant/child trauma, polyvagal theory and impacts of trauma on the body. She acknowledges the birth and perinatal experience is a foundational time for the early development of the child’s embodied experience of their life, which begins with conception through to the first ~ 2 years of life.

Rose is inspired by the rich depth and meaning of the personal stories surrounding our birth experiences, and the potential for healing through sharing our stories. She is also inspired by the wisdom of many land-based cultures who have very wise birthing practices and have innately known and upheld the need for safety and privacy during birth, the sacredness of birth, the consciousness of the child being born, and the interconnectedness of all living beings.

Rose offers Birth Trauma Therapy as a bodymind practicing therapist, with specific training in working with birth and perinatal trauma, emotions and traumatic symptoms in the bodymind, and an understanding of the impacts of medical interventions in birth. She is a registered Acupuncturist and Chinese Medicine Practitioner, Certified Healing Birth Practitioner, and offers relational mindfulness and somatic therapeutic approaches for working with trauma. If Rose feels she is not suited to help you on your journey, or if she feels you, your partner, or child would benefit from additional support, she may recommend other practitioners or support services to best support your healing.

If you would like to enquire about any of the Birth and Perinatal Trauma Therapy Services, you can contact Rose below

Client Feedback

CONTACT

Practice Hours: Monday 9 am - 6 pm | Wednesday 8 am - 5 pm | Thursday 8 am - 6 pm

Practice Location: 47 Pitua Road, Te Puna, Tauranga 3176
+ 64 21 665 915 
rose@aldebaranhealing.co.nz