Birth Trauma: Today, a call for submissions; tomorrow, keep telling your story

 Birth trauma can feel like peering through a fence and not knowing how to get to the other side. Trauma can look different from birth to birth and from one person to the next. It can impact mothers and parents, caregivers, family members, and health staff.

In my view, we must take steps to prevent birth trauma and address it when it develops. We can support birthing women and gender diverse parents, their families, and their care teams. 

Prevention can look like engaging the mother/birther as a co-decision maker and leader of their birth process; embracing true informed consent; avoiding coercion; and using open, nonthreatening communication before, during, and after birth.

We can start to heal birth trauma by bringing stories into the light. Birthing parents who have experienced trauma may find healing through creative expression. They may benefit from therapy which could include trauma-focused psychotherapy, spiritual counseling, naturopathic or allopathic medicine, and somatic approaches like yoga. 

Today, I am posting about an opportunity and an invitation to submit research, art and stories for a special issue of a medical humanities journal. 

Have you experienced birth trauma or do you have something you want to communicate about it? If yes, this is for you. 

If you're reading this after the submission date, I hope this inspires you to tell your story in a different venue. If you're not an academic, this call might feel a little formal. Please don't let it stop you from submitting. The call:

Illuminating the Experience of Birth Trauma
Call for Research, Art, and Story

Deadline for abstract submissions for early consideration: February 1, 2025

Full name/name of organization: Survive and Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine
Contact email: zomibloompoetry@gmail.com, kelsea@d.umn.edu, and dbeard@d.umn.edu
Submitted by: Kelsea Schoenbauer, Zomi Bloom, and David Beard for Survive and Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine

According to the late birth advocate and doula Penny Simkin (2022), “Between 25 and 34% of women report that their children’s births were traumatic, even though the staff and their support team may not perceive it that way.” This special issue of Survive and Thrive seeks research and scholarship, stories and art around the experience of birth trauma.

Defining Birth Trauma
Penny Simkin (2022) gives us a starting place, a broad umbrella, to define birth trauma:

Birth trauma includes physical injury, danger, or death to mother or baby, or the perception thereof by the mother or partner. It also includes feelings of extreme fear, aloneness, disrespect, lack of control or helplessness. (para. 1)

Some forms of birth trauma are unavoidable parts of the birthing experience.; however, some are not. Some forms of birth trauma are created by systemic policies and inertia. Other forms are created by individual medical decisions that bring harm to the birthing person, baby, and family.

Birth advocacy organization Birth Monopoly (2024) connects the experience of birth trauma to the practice of what they call “obstetric violence”:

Obstetric violence is an attempt to control the birthing person’s body and decisions, violating their autonomy and dignity. This mistreatment of women and birthing people in the childbirth setting is often delivered verbally and normalized as routine care. Obstetric violence has also been termed “disrespect & abuse” in birth settings by the World Health Organization (2014). (para. 1)

Some forms of obstetric violence derive from medical procedures enacted without consent. According to the Birth Trauma Association (2024), “two in five women giving birth have had procedures performed on them without their consent” (para. 1). These include: vaginal examination (17.9%), episiotomy (16.6%), cervical sweep (12.5%), and rupture of the membranes (9.8%) (paras. 1-2). Birth trauma could involve unexpected harmful circumstances, assault, or lack of choice and coercion.

Without sharing stories, birthing persons suffer in silence, sometimes not even realizing their experience causes ripples of harm through the rest of their lives. To that end, we initiate this special issue to call particular attention to the experience of birth trauma.


A Call for Research, Art, and Story
We are seeking submissions in the form of research articles, essays, narratives, art, creative nonfiction, poetry, stories, and other artforms that answer the questions:

• What is birth trauma?
• What events, actions, and systems contribute to birth trauma?
• What is the impact of birth trauma on birthing persons, birth partners, babies, families, and birthworkers, and their communities?
• What are the consequences of sharing birth trauma experiences for birthing persons, birth partners, and birthworkers?
• How do birthing persons, families, and others move forward after experiencing birth trauma?
• Why do so many birthing persons experience birth trauma?
• How can we listen for and understand instances of birth trauma in its earliest awakenings?
• How can we detect, prevent, and treat birth trauma?
• How can we facilitate better birth experiences?
• What constitutes a better birth experience?

Topics discussed may include instances of disrespectful practices, obstetrical violence, and more. Works may engage intersections between birth trauma and gender and racial violence. They may focus on the consequences following a traumatic birth, including pregnancy and infant loss, postpartum depression or perinatal mood disorders, fear of and anxiety around future births, sexual and other health dysfunction, damage to infant-parent relationship, negative impact on relationship with birth partner, trauma transmitted in the family system, lack of trust in the healthcare system, and economic burden placed on birthing person and family.

We welcome contributions from women and other birthing people; birthworkers and health practitioners (doulas, midwives, nurses, physicians, and other naturopathic and health care providers); advocates and caregivers; parents, partners and families; and finally scholars and researchers (in public health, health communication, gender and sexuality studies, nursing, medicine, psychology, social work/sociology, and other fields).

We seek a diversity of voices: low, medium, and high-income settings; various education backgrounds, credentials, training, and areas of expertise; urban, suburban, and rural; liberal and conservative; cis-gender, trans-gender, gender-queer, and non-conforming; straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, asexual, and more; all races and ethnic heritages; and any ideological background, religious and spiritual perspectives.

We accept writing in all genres (from poem to essay to scholarly treatise to video, as well as visual arts).


SUBMISSION DEADLINES
February 1, 2025: Deadline for Abstracts. Authors who submit abstracts will receive early feedback and encouragement, if their work fits the call.

Submit to editors Zomi Bloom (zomibloompoetry@gmail.com) and Kelsea Schoenbauer (kelsea@d.umn.edu) and managing editor David Beard (dbeard@d.umn.edu) simultaneously.

May 1, 2025: Deadline for Completed Work. You do not need to have submitted an abstract to submit a full paper.

Submit to: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/

Fall 2025: Projected Publication.


SUBMISSION REQUIREMENTS
"Submissions" may include text, video, audio, or image files that express the aims and scope of the journal. Submissions cannot have been previously published, nor be forthcoming in a journal or book (print or electronic). Please note that "publication" in a working-paper series does not constitute prior publication. If you have concerns about the submission terms for Survive & Thrive: A Journal for Medical Humanities and Narrative as Medicine, please contact the editors. See: https://repository.stcloudstate.edu/survive_thrive/


REFERENCES AND SUGGESTED READINGS

Birth Monopoly. (2024). What is obstetric violence? https://birthmonopoly.com/obstetric-violence/

Birth Trauma Association. (2024, July 15). Two in five women in labour have procedures performed without their consent, survey finds. https://www.birthtraumaassociation.org/news-campaigns/blog-post-title-four-4jwnw-x3zm9-he23x-4gycw-zr29a-8nx7j-x6c7t-gzrpm-xzd6a-e2b58

Elmir, R., & Schmied, V. (2022). A qualitative study of the impact of adverse birth experiences on fathers. Women and Birth, 35, e41-e48. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wombi.2021.01.005

Horesh, D., Garthus-Niegel, S., & Horsch, A. (2021). Childbirth-related PTSD: Is it a unique post-traumatic disorder? Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, 39(3), 221-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/02646838.2021.1930739

Irth. (2024). Birth but we drop the b for bias. https://irthapp.com/

Reed, R., Sharman, R., & Inglis, C. (2017). Women’s descriptions of childbirth trauma relating to care provider actions and interactions. BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth, 17(21). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12884-016-1197-0

Rice, H., & Warland, J. (2013). Bearing witness: Midwives experiences of witnessing traumatic birth. Midwifery, 29(9), 1056-1063. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.midw.2012.12.003

Shorey, S., & Wong, P. Z. E. (2022). Traumatic childbirth experiences of new parents: A meta-synthesis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 23(3), 748-763. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838020977161

Simkin, P. (2022). What to do during a traumatic labor and birth to reduce the likelihood of later post-traumatic stress disorder. Prevention & Treatment of Traumatic Childbirth. https://pattch.org/what-to-do-during-a-traumatic-labor-and-birth-to-reduce-the-likelihood-of-later-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/

World Health Organization (2015). The prevention and elimination of disrespect and abuse during facility-based childbirth.. https://iris.who.int/bitstream/handle/10665/134588/WHO_RHR_14.23_eng.pdf