Healing birth trauma together

22/10/2021

Healing in community. Join us at the Bump and beyond hub in Marlow. TOMORROW!

Welcome to our birth and emotional trauma support workshop.

This support circle is designed to support recovery from emotional and physical injury's associated with a difficult birth and or early parenting experiences.

23rd of October 12pm.

Book via the link below: https://bookatthebumpandbeyondhub.as.me/?calendarID=6010316

28/03/2021

Please sign this petition for more mental health support for new parents. This is an area so neglected and underfunded. The impact of this negligence is huge and ripples across children’s development, family health and connection, education ..

and the list goes on.

23/03/2021

The birth experience of Ms Beaden in this article is really awful. Sadly, I have heard many birth stories like hers in the past year. Well done to this courageous woman and the Birthrights organisation for raising awareness and campaigning on behalf of so so many people deeply impacted by similar maternity and birth experiences. New regulations in place from next week.. details on the article.

Exclusive: 'It was my first time giving birth and I had never had major surgery. I was shaking and crying,' says Christina Breaden

04/12/2020

If you’ve given birth since 8th October you may be interested in completing this form for the governments attention.






https://pregnantthenscrewed.typeform.com/to/n593VKC2?fbclid=IwAR12AKC8VLh2yvetP_QtMRaAJS6VRI9ewZbfLXDb7KIZXYs7Vl5_7aOT_sE

Turn data collection into an experience with Typeform. Create beautiful online forms, surveys, quizzes, and so much more. Try it for FREE.

01/12/2020

Self care ... looking your disappointments straight in the eye ... bring your own hero.. yes you can.

“Self-care is often a very unbeautiful thing.

It is making a spreadsheet of your debt and enforcing a morning routine and cooking yourself healthy meals and no longer just running from your problems and calling the distraction a solution.

It is often doing the ugliest thing that you have to do, like sweat through another workout or tell a toxic friend you don’t want to see them anymore or get a second job so you can have a savings account or figure out a way to accept yourself so that you’re not constantly exhausted from trying to be everything, all the time and then needing to take deliberate, mandated breaks from living to do basic things like drop some oil into a bath and read Marie Claire and turn your phone off for the day.

A world in which self-care has to be such a trendy topic is a world that is sick. Self-care should not be something we resort to because we are so absolutely exhausted that we need some reprieve from our own relentless internal pressure.

True self-care is not salt baths and chocolate cake, it is making the choice to build a life you don’t need to regularly escape from.

And that often takes doing the thing you least want to do.

It often means looking your failures and disappointments square in the eye and re-strategizing. It is not satiating your immediate desires. It is letting go. It is choosing new. It is disappointing some people. It is making sacrifices for others. It is living a way that other people won’t, so maybe you can live in a way that other people can’t.

It is letting yourself be normal. Regular. Unexceptional. It is sometimes having a dirty kitchen and deciding your ultimate goal in life isn’t going to be having abs and keeping up with your fake friends. It is deciding how much of your anxiety comes from not actualizing your latent potential, and how much comes from the way you were being trained to think before you even knew what was happening.

If you find yourself having to regularly indulge in consumer self-care, it’s because you are disconnected from actual self-care, which has very little to do with “treating yourself” and a whole lot do with parenting yourself and making choices for your long-term wellness.

It is no longer using your hectic and unreasonable life as justification for self-sabotage in the form of liquor and procrastination. It is learning how to stop trying to “fix yourself” and start trying to take care of yourself… and maybe finding that taking care lovingly attends to a lot of the problems you were trying to fix in the first place.

It means being the hero of your life, not the victim. It means rewiring what you have until your everyday life isn’t something you need therapy to recover from. It is no longer choosing a life that looks good over a life that feels good. It is giving the hell up on some goals so you can care about others. It is being honest even if that means you aren’t universally liked. It is meeting your own needs so you aren’t anxious and dependent on other people.

It is becoming the person you know you want and are meant to be. Someone who knows that salt baths and chocolate cake are ways to enjoy life – not escape from it.”
-Brianna Wiest

[Illustration: Yaoyao Ma]

12/11/2020

A courageous and real account of postnatal depression. There are many elements of this account that those who haven’t got postnatal depression can also fully relate to? Thank you laura. 🙏🏻

I’ve been asked to speak about my experience with PND

But I gotta be honest with you, sometimes I’m still in it.
Sometimes I’m still hurting.
I know how far I’ve come but I also know that I am still in the thick of it.

Motherhood is hard. It’s really hard.
I stay up at night wishing I was better at it.
I give myself migraines from forgetting to drink water & feed myself because I am trying to cook, clean & be a children’s entertainer.
I have 3 children under 6. & sometimes I just cannot cope. I can’t. I wish I could. I get angry with myself because I am not acing it.

I sometimes get angry with myself because I know that without antidepressants I’ll be inpatient & angry with them. I hate it.

We are in a society that teaches us to strip all the layers of ourselves to give it to our children, we are in a society that belittles mothers who work, don’t work, who use childcare, who feed their kids takeaway, have a messy house, who aren’t a children’s entertainer, a maid, a cook, we ridicule them. We do! I get it all the time. Constant abusing comments every time I “slip” up.

It’s exhausting.

But doing it all? Being so perfect? There’s no awards for that. No gold star, no big trophy. No, there’s exhaustion, there’s resentment & burnout, that’s our reward.

So mother’s, everywhere, I implore you, f**k what anyone else says. Who gives a flying f**k if your house is messy, who gives a s**t if you use childcare whether you work or not, who cares if you hand your kids iPads. You cannot do it all. You just cannot. You are not a robot.
Ask for help, use an online village, send your kids to someone else to look after.

You cannot do this alone & there is absolutely nothing wrong with that.

when my thoughts spiral with guilt whether I’m good enough, whether other people think my parenting is good enough. I end up in a real dark place where I feel utterly alone, & no one is going to save me.

I love my children, but this is me.

I need antidepressants to be a better mother
My house will sometimes look like a bomb site
My kids get takeaway & TV and iPads.

that’s how I survive.
& in order to keep surviving I must remind myself that, that is good enough.

Today I cried, and that’s okay too.

11/11/2020

Have you ever said ‘no I’m not fine, I’m feeling sad..., scared... angry... , overwhelmed... ’ and got the support and reassurance you needed as a new parent?

Let’s rephrase this question...
what are your answers? What’s stopping your truth?

If people could just share their feelings truthfully and were met with compassion and reassurance- how different would life as a new parent be? How would it feel to be heard?
Fine- what the hell does that mean anyway?!

09/11/2020

This is heartbreaking. I see a lot of mothers in my practice who are experiencing trauma and PTSD after their baby needed care in NICU.

The nature of babies needs in NICU care is already traumatic. Surely the fundamental need for babies and mothers to be together should be balanced against the Covid risk with suitable measures in place.

Due to strict COVID-19 restrictions, one in seven parents are prevented from seeing their baby in neonatal care, causing a strain on mental health.

Our Chief Executive, Caroline Lee-Davey was quoted in the Mail on Sunday: "Our smallest and sickest babies need their parents at their side to give them the best chance of survival, even during a pandemic."

https://buff.ly/32nU4YL

29/10/2020

Courage can be sharing your story in a safe space or lifting the phone and breaking your silence... courage is taking even the tiniest the step towards healing.

20/10/2020

Amen ❤️

I’m supporting the campaign, which is raising awareness about the devastating effects of facing maternity appointments and labour alone due to Covid restrictions.⁣
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Currently, many hospitals across the UK only allow birth partners to be present for the final stage of labour. This means women can be in labour for hours alone, with birth partners missing the birth of their children, or even worse, women receiving heartbreaking news about their pregnancy.⁣
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I understand we need to stay safe during the pandemic, but if you can go shopping wearing zero PPE, to the pub with five friends or attend a wedding with up to 30 guests, why can’t you have your partner with you at the birth of your baby? ⁣
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Women are attending scans, experiencing stillbirths, finding out their babies have died, going through difficult and traumatic labours or operations alone. I heard that on the day the pubs had reopened, a woman went to a scan alone and found out she’d had a miscarriage. She had to call her husband to tell him the baby they had tried for for 18 months was gone after 11 weeks.💔⁣
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Research shows that stress is incredibly damaging for an unborn baby’s development, and there is a link between stress in pregnancy and severe postnatal depression. We are creating a future epidemic of poor mental health among mothers by not lifting these restrictions.⁣
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Please show your support by sharing your photo, also sign and share the petition. (link in bio) Our government needs to address the issue and allow all NHS trusts to ensure women have partners with them at all stages of pregnancy and labour. Thank you x