Healing from a Traumatic Birth As a Trauma Therapist: What the Hospital Taught Me About Getting Through
Let me tell you—while I was in the hospital after my son’s birth, multiple nurses commented on how peaceful I seemed. Like, “Wow, you’re doing so well emotionally—you’re so calm!” And part of me wanted to laugh (or maybe scream?) because what they didn’t see was that my calm was a weird mix of being in shock, running on survival-mode adrenaline, and relying hard on the skills I’ve picked up over the years as a trauma therapist.
This is actually part two in a series about trauma, so if you missed the first one—hi! I’m a somatic therapist who specializes in trauma, anxiety, attachment (especially with couples), and supporting folks stuck in survival mode. And recently… I found myself navigating my own traumatic experience: a birth story that was anything but smooth.
To catch you up: my son was taken to the NICU, I had two surgeries in one day (one of them was an emergency), and I woke up in the ICU still intubated. It was terrifying. It was intense. And it taught me so much about how we survive extended hard things.
This post isn’t just for other parents or people who’ve had a traumatic birth (though if that’s you—my heart is right there with you). This is also for anyone who has ever had to endure something long, scary, and overwhelming, and needed to just keep going until they could finally breathe again.
But let me be real upfront with you: my way through was not cute. Picture a woman crying multiple times a day, hair unstyled, skin dry as the Sahara, looking like she had been through it—because I had. This wasn’t about glowing and healing with grace. This was about raw survival and using whatever I could to hang onto my sanity.
The Reality of My Hospital Stay
I was so fortunate to receive good medical care and I am very grateful for that. At the same time so much of the medical care was painful, exhausting, and at times scary. Between an emergency surgery, constant IV drips, non-stop pricks from blood tests, moving from wheelchairs to tables and beds for scans and x-rays while I could barely walk, not being able to eat or digest any food, and feeling trapped in the same small room it felt like each moment something new to struggle through was coming my way.
All of that while trying to still care for my newborn and recover from surgery. Oh—and did I mention I was separated from my baby for the first three days because he was in the NICU?
I had family to support me (thank goodness!) and access to health insurance and that’s a huge privilege. But even with support, it was a marathon of managing pain, fear, grief, and a general sense of being completely out of control.
So how did I get through it?
Here are three things that helped me hang on during this chaotic, exhausting time:
1. Focus on a Stabilizing Goal
Listen—when you’re in crisis, it’s not the time to hold yourself to your usual high standards. It’s not the time for productivity or personal growth or reinventing yourself. You need a stabilizing goal—something short-term and concrete that gives you a sense of direction and hope.
For me, that goal was getting home.
I wasn’t thinking about embracing the beauty of new motherhood. I wasn’t journaling about this sacred life transition. I was thinking: Get through this. Get stable. Get home. That focus gave me a reason to push through every pain or challenge.
I knew that if I constantly let myself spiral into thoughts about how this birth wasn’t going how I imagined, or how I was “failing” to bond with my baby, it would wreck me emotionally. I knew it because sometimes I did get into that spiral! Every time I caught my brain heading down that road, I gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) brought it back to this one thing: Just get home.
2. Embrace Distraction
For most of us hospitals are sensory nightmares. Harsh lights, constant beeping, strange smells, and the underlying hum of anxiety.
Your nervous system is already fried, and hyper-focusing on every single unpleasant detail only intensifies that stress. That’s where distraction became my best friend.
I played puzzle games on my mom’s phone. I listened to my sister tell me about the Trader Joe’s haul she grabbed on the way. I watched garbage TV. I scrolled Instagram and only stopped for comedy bits and baby animals. I daydreamed—hard.
These tiny pockets of distraction gave me small breaks. They weren’t deep healing moments, but they were relief. And that matters.
3. Resource Wherever You Can
Resourcing is just a fancy way of saying: find, reflect on, and connect with anything that gives your nervous system a moment of connection to well-being, relief, or comfort.
It could be a memory, a place, a moment, a scent, a song, a visual, a texture—anything that gives your body a tiny “ahhh” feeling, even if it’s brief.
My room felt like a beige prison—scratchy sheets, no art, medical equipment everywhere. But I found tiny resources:
Looking at my baby’s face
Daydreaming about lounging on my couch at home
Staring at the bushes outside my window
Sniffing lavender essential oil on my wrist
These little things were like cups of water during a desert hike. Not life-changing, but life-sustaining.
And just to keep it real, resourcing didn’t always feel good. It often just made the hard parts a little more tolerable. And sometimes, that’s all you can ask for.
Final Thoughts
So—no, my “calm” in the hospital wasn’t peace. It was survival. I cried. I was scared. I didn’t feel like myself. But these tools—setting a short-term focus, embracing distraction, and resourcing where I could—got me through.
And that’s the thing about surviving trauma: sometimes it’s not about transformation or beauty or making meaning (yet). Sometimes it’s just about getting through the day.
If you’re in the middle of something hard right now, I see you. Your healing doesn’t have to be graceful or picture-perfect. You don’t have to glow through it. You just have to make it through, one step at a time.
You’ve got this. And when you don’t feel like you do—that’s okay too. Keep walking.
