‘What if I die?’: SA mum opens up on traumatic birth

As an SA senator establishes a new committee to examine women’s health, one Adelaide mum shares her own birth trauma story.

South Australian Senator Marielle Smith has successfully led a push to establish a Senate select committee to examine aspects of women’s health. It will have a focus on postpartum healthcare in Australia, following Smith’s own documented difficulties after giving birth.

My new doctor reacts to the birth summary in front of him.

Maternal exhaustion. Unsuccessful ventouse. Forceps. Postpartum haemorrhage. Epidural, none.

Of course, there is so much the brief medical description doesn’t say.

Unforgettable, searing, pass-out pain. Inability to walk properly for weeks. Fainting in the shower from the blood loss. A woman, broken.

It doesn’t cover the colours of “that day”. Grey, for the 40-centimetre steel tongs used to drag my daughter out. Black, for the bruising all over my perineum that took months to heal. Red, for the blood splattered across the birthing suite floor. And pink, for the angry marks across my little girl’s face.

It doesn’t cover the way I felt “that day”. No longer human. Unable to stop the things happening to me, and being put inside me. Zero control.

This is birth trauma.

Others may not see it, but its face is recognisable.

Sometimes it’s the mother whose throat chokes up when everyone sings her child Happy Birthday. For her, it’s another reminder of the hardest moment of her life.

It’s visible in a large age gap between siblings. “You waited a while”, friends will say.

A birth trauma survivor can look so desperately sad when she holds a newborn. While she’s privileged to be a mother, shadows block those early days and precious baby smells. Ugly thoughts remain. Unrelenting mental self-harm mixed with mother’s guilt.

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