I have revisited the day my daughter was born more times than I can remember. Almost every night since it happened, the trauma I experienced creeps back. Yet the medics involved will not have given that day a fleeting thought. It feels like an insulting paradox, that such a life-changing moment for one person is but an everyday event for another.

My labour didn’t go to plan. I experienced a searing white-hot pain when my drug-free water birth ended in an episiotomy without painkillers. I was terrified when dozens of medical staff rushed back and forth with equipment talking in urgent, hushed tones about a falling heart beat. Above all, I felt powerless, a total loss of control, and that I had no value as I lay naked on my back with strangers’ hands and faces around my exposed groin. As a result, I suffered birth trauma and developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Birth trauma is a silent epidemic affecting birthing bays. In 2016, there were 696,271 births in the UK. The Birth Trauma Association estimates that the impacts of a traumatic birth are felt by 200,000 women each year, 10% of whom, develop PTSD like me. There’s almost a one in three chance that a vulnerable new mother feeling the devastating effects of flashbacks, insomnia, hypervigilance, fear, anxiety and depression will require specialised treatment for years after the event. Meanwhile, 200,000 newborn babies are living their most critical period of development in the care of a primary care-giver debilitated by poor mental health.

It’s easy to miss birth trauma in the flurry of tests after a baby is born – that brand new mother lying dazed, confused, withdrawn. It lurks in the shadows when women experience extreme levels of pain, a loss of control, high levels of intervention, emergency deliveries, impersonal treatment, and when a stressful birth compounds previous trauma like sexual abuse.

In my case, as in most, it was a combination of factors. Some of them I can accept as unavoidable when it is determined that a baby needs assistance to arrive alive and well. But others, like the lack of dignity, respect and humanity I felt in the birth room are still hard to come to terms with, two years after the event. Giving birth went from an empowering transition to motherhood to me becoming a vessel to be emptied of cargo. I became an object rather than the subject.

Something happens when you and your baby become a number on a whiteboard. You stop being a friend, a sister, a daughter, a mother-to-be in the eyes of those around you. You become patient A and baby B. Some might argue that this is essential under the pressures of today’s medical system. Removing humanity in the most human of situations is dangerous. Who is there to remind doctors, among the urgent beeps rushing from one medical urgency to the next, that sensitivity and communication is paramount? We have all been led to believe that physical health is all that matters in the emergency room.

It isn’t.

With the beep of a baby’s failing heartbeat as your backdrop, every minute counts. But compassion is also essential. I would have appreciated it if just one of the medics at my birth had stepped away from my genitals, taken my hand, looked me in the eye and remembered that I was not just patient A, but a mother-to-be at a critical moment in my life.

Women in this vulnerable situation are not in a position to fight back, or run away. As a result, some freeze – and they remain frozen, in a state of fear-induced hypervigilance, until the deep emotions that are kept back can be released at a later date.

Usually considered a soldier’s affliction, PTSD affects 20,000 new mothers in the UK each year. At first, I thought I was just coping badly with motherhood. Everyone knows it involves sleepless nights and countless worries over your newborn. When I sought professional reassurance over the health of my baby, I got lucky. The health worker recognised what she was seeing – that my constant fears around my daughter were more reflective of my own poor health than that of my thriving baby.

When eventually I was diagnosed with PTSD after six months, I unravelled. At one point, I collapsed in the corridor of a shopping centre, unable to breathe. I needed psychotherapy for worsening panic attacks and private birth trauma counselling just to be able to cope with basic tasks like leaving the house. I have had three months of specialist counselling, and six months of psychotherapy. I am still a long way from being able to function like before.

The cost of birth trauma to the NHS is significant, with so many new mothers requiring years of specialist treatment to recover. Then there is the cost to the family of one less wage because of mental illness, and the potential damage to a new baby’s mental health and other relationships.

Now I find myself the mother of a toddler. Hypervigilance still catches me unaware as I find myself triple-checking the locks and listening to my hammering heart in the dark. I can’t yet trust another person to look after my daughter overnight. But I am coping with day-to-day life, with family support and regular therapy. Some day soon, I might be strong enough to consider part-time work again. In my dreams, I always saw myself with three children, but I’m not sure I will ever get over my fears enough to face another birth. My daughter is the love of my life, and she is nothing short of amazing. I’m grateful, despite the lasting impact of her bitter-sweet arrival.

This is an edited version of a post that first appeared on the writer’s blog.

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