Reply to How to comfort friend after disappointing delivery?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Listen, validate her feelings, offer encouragement and support. But mostly listen. Encourage her to speak with her doctor and get a referral for some postpartum mental health help. Stay on top of her husband to make sure he is supporting her the ways she needs it.

For a lot of us, disappointment over how a birth went seems so foreign. You are pregnant, you delivered a healthy baby, why are you mourning the experience when the end result is perfect? But for people with anxiety, depression, or who might be prone to postpartum mental health struggles, it’s their own personal tragedy. A lot of new moms and that position just need to vent or cry or complain or mourn. You just listening and asking if she wants advice will be a big help, I am sure. You are a good friend to want to approach her situation with care but not to take a backseat if you think she is not getting the help she needs.[/quote]

Yes, mourning is the key word -- you go into birth with a vision of how things will be or how you hope it will be; you can't help it, it is normal. Then when that is not what happens, you do need to mourn the birth you didn't have, even while you celebrate the child you do have. People mourn differently; some may say, "oh well, that's life," while others will dwell on "what could I have done differently" or just feel sad that things didn't go as planned, or feel traumatized that instead of enjoying a lovely birthing moment they expected, they were thrown into chaos, stress, and literal life and death danger, etc. To deny that that experience can be traumatizing to any given person is very short-sighted, and to gas-light a woman in this situation is very dangerous.

OP, you can support your friend through the mourning process and actually look for the five stages of grief -- you may see them all. Keep in mind that the mourning is not about the baby, but about the trauma mom went through.[/quote]

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