What is Traumatic Birth Syndrome?
The act of giving birth is an amazing, beautiful, and incredibly emotional process. Unfortunately, even when you follow all the necessary steps and advice books galore, there’s still a chance of something going wrong that could ultimately affect the health of the mother and/or child. In fact, birth injury rates suggest that every year, about 28,000 babies will be born with some type of injury. That’s about seven out of every 1,000 babies born.
While these birth injury statistics can be frightening enough on their own, there’s also a condition known as traumatic birth syndrome that can have a lasting effect on the mother as well.
Traumatic birth syndrome occurs after a birthing process that involves some kind of duress, complication, or otherwise traumatic experience. This could include things like severe tears, assisted births, surgical procedures, or even the disconnect between how you envisioned the process happening and how it actually went.
The effects of traumatic birth syndrome can be physical, mental, and emotional. Physically, things like scars and infections can be relatively easy to identify, but oftentimes, it is the deeper internal struggles that women can find the most challenging to overcome. Replaying the event in your head over and over again, fear of giving birth in the future, difficulties in your personal relationship with your partner and even the child itself can all result from traumatic birth syndrome.
The onset of these conditions can then, of course, bring about things like depression, anxiety, and uncertainty. In some cases, it can even lead to full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
As more people have become familiar with this term through the tragic effects it has had, especially on military veterans, it’s easy to see why good birth injury lawyers know their job doesn’t necessarily stop with the child’s physical condition. Traumatic birth syndrome can be just as serious in many ways and needs to be accounted for accordingly if it’s brought on by the negligent actions of the healthcare professional involved.
According to a recent study, females are inherently more likely to be the victims of medical malpractice (60% to 40% in males) and this little known/talked about condition of traumatic birth syndrome is another serious potential problem to be aware of.