Therapy for Pregnancy After a Traumatic Birth in Los Angeles and California
The test was positive and you waited to feel something good.
Instead you felt your stomach drop. And then, close behind it, the shame of that, because this was wanted, because you tried for this, because there are women who would give anything to be holding the stick you're holding. Somewhere underneath is a sentence you haven't said to anyone: I don't know if I can do that again.
I work with women throughout Los Angeles and California who are pregnant after a birth that didn't go as planned.
Not badly in the sense their charts record. Badly in the sense that something happened in that room that they have not been able to put down, and now their body is being asked to walk back toward it with a due date attached.
The pregnancy that isn't allowed to be joyful
Everyone around you is treating this as good news, which it is, and which leaves you no obvious place to put the dread.
So it comes out sideways. You put off the first appointment.
You feel your pulse climb in the parking lot of the same medical building. Someone hands you a form asking about your last delivery and you fill it in with three clinical words that describe none of it. A provider glances at your history and says something breezy about how this one will be different, and you nod, and you go home and don't sleep.
Then there's the countdown. If it went wrong at thirty-six weeks, you will find yourself doing arithmetic at eleven weeks about how far away thirty-six is. Your body remembers the gestational age where the floor gave way, and it starts bracing months out.
This is a nervous system doing exactly what it learned to do. Dramatic and ungrateful have nothing to do with it.
Processing the first birth before the second
Here is what I most want you to know: the memory of the first birth can be worked on directly, and it is better to do that now than to carry it into the delivery room.
EMDR is the approach I use most often for this. It's a structured trauma therapy that helps the brain finish processing an experience that got stuck mid-event, so that remembering stops setting off the whole alarm system. You don't have to narrate every detail for it to work, and you don't have to decide in advance whether what happened to you qualifies as capital-T trauma. Women tell me that afterward the memory is still theirs but no longer loaded, and that they can walk into an appointment without their body preparing for impact.
Doing this while you're pregnant requires care and pacing, and how we approach it depends on where you are in the pregnancy and what your nervous system can hold. That's a conversation we have together rather than a protocol I apply to you.
Making the decisions from a settled place
At some point you will be asked to make choices. Repeat cesarean or attempt a VBAC. Which hospital. Whether to hire a doula. Whether to write a birth plan at all, when the last one turned out to be a piece of paper somebody set down on a counter.
Fear will happily make those decisions for you. So will the pressure to prove you're not afraid. I've seen both go badly: women who scheduled a cesarean they didn't want because they couldn't tolerate the uncertainty, and women who pushed for the birth they thought they should want and spent nine months quietly terrified.
What I want for you is the version where you choose from a settled place. Where you can tell your provider what happened last time in a voice that stays level, ask for what you need, and know the difference between a decision made out of preference and one made out of panic. That's a chapter you can actually be present for, rather than one you get through with your eyes closed.
I'm a licensed marriage and family therapist and I'm Perinatal Mental Health Certified through Postpartum Support International. Birth, and what birth does to people, is my specialty rather than one item on a long list. I use EMDR, psychodynamic work, and mindfulness-based approaches, and I fit the approach to the person rather than the reverse.
Questions mothers ask me
How far along should I be before starting?
There's no required window. Some women come the week they get a positive test; others come at thirty weeks when the dread finally outgrows their ability to manage it. Earlier gives us more room, but there's useful work to do at any point, including in the last few weeks.
I'm not sure mine counts as a traumatic birth. It wasn't an emergency.
Then you're in good company, because most of the women I see open with some version of that sentence. Whether a birth was traumatic is determined by what it was like to be you in that room: whether you felt safe, whether you were told what was happening, whether anyone asked before they touched you. The intervention list has surprisingly little to do with it. Plenty of medically uneventful births leave a mark, and plenty of frightening ones don't.
Can we do trauma work while I'm pregnant?
Often, yes, with attention to pacing and to what's manageable at your particular stage. We'd talk through it before starting anything, and we'd go at a speed that leaves you steady when you walk out of the room. If the timing isn't right for processing work, there's a great deal we can do to bring your baseline down in the meantime.
Can you communicate with my OB or midwife?
With your written permission, yes. Some women find it useful for their provider to have a short summary of what happened last time so they're not explaining it in a triage room. Others prefer to keep the two separate. Your call.
This work isn’t just about coping, it’s about change.
empower
your
next
chapter
This work isn't just about coping, it's about change.
If you're pregnant and quietly frightened, that's reason enough to reach out. You don't have to wait until it gets worse.
Book a free consultation with me. We'll talk about what happened last time, what you're carrying into this pregnancy, and whether this feels like the right fit.