Posts Tagged ‘birth trauma’

The Wound of Mother-Newborn Separation

IanIsolette_optAs I contemplate the 23rd anniversary of my daughter’s birth this week, my thoughts go back to the oh-so-tender moments surrounding birth. How powerful they are, for mothers and for babies. (And for fathers, but that’s for another day!) How imprints from these moments can mark us lifelong.

After Eve was born, she never left my side during our 24-hour ABC room stay. This in contrast to my son Ian’s birth, when I gave in and allowed them to whisk him away to the newborn nursery (against the strong advice of his progressive pediatrician, Jay Gordon). With Ian I was in essence revisiting and reenacting my own traumatic beginnings — as an adoptee who had been separated from my biological mother immediately after I was born. {Read the rest at mothering.com}

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The Lifelong Power of Birth Imprints

C-SectionSpotlightI cannot let Empowered Birth Awareness Week close without reflecting on the fact that birth leaves powerful lifelong imprints. Our empowerment lies in becoming aware of them and from understanding that these birth imprints are always available to be revised, renegotiated and healed. In a moment I will share for the first time ever the story of my son’s birth imprint and its powerful healing.

Birth Imprints

Birth is one of our most momentous embodied experiences. And even though we don’t consciously remember this huge event in our lives, each of us carries the story of our birth etched on our body and psyche. We care unconscious traces of somatic memory that can keenly influence our behavioral and personality patterns. {Read the rest at mothering.com}

Cesarean image by: Robert S. Donovan through a Creative Commons license

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