Birth Trauma Affecting Bonding

I have been in shock from what I read in The Aware Baby book by Aletha Solter. She says (pages 17-21) that the first hour after birth when baby is alert it is the optimal time for bonding with her mother. They are together, and the baby learns how to eat from his mother, receiving that same comfort that was familiar from the womb, and the mother is actually the one who attaches to her baby in order to insure his survival. Unlike with animals, where their babies attach onto their mother and imprint, assuring their survival. Animals are instinctual, and humans are emotional and our babies are so much less developed than animal kin when they are born that they need their mother so much more. Therefore, the mother's love hormones that cause bonding are activated after she gives birth and she can love her child.

She says that when mothers miss that time to bond, it can cause difficulties with them caring for the infant as much as needed. For example, a mother who had a hard time with her son for so long only realized much later that she did not bond with him in the beginning and wanted to make it up to him at age 15. But it can only be done after the grief has been felt for the missing postnatal bonding time.

This postnatal bonding is interrupted when something interrupts the process of it. Such as traumatic birth, as she says on page 43, where the baby was overexposed to mother's stress and put under pressure through birth tools, and feels out of control. The mother will also feel tension and need to release the emotions of sadness and grief, and this will block her from feeling full care for her baby. The baby is over-stressed too, and his crying will be over average, and they will further have a hard time bonding. Furthermore, if the mother is unaware of the importance of releasing trauma and its impact for emotional well being, she may blame herself for the inability to fully want to care for her child and suppress her feelings out of shame.

This all happened to me. And I always knew that I did not have the optimal birth experience, but I was not aware of that being a reason for my high stress and tension when it came to caring for my little one. I was so accustomed to all my attachments being difficult, that I just took the anxiety and her extensive crying as a given of being in relationship with me. Again, the shame and inner doubt ruled everything. 

But I remember, that first day in the hospital with her in my arms, I felt this deep inner sadness, grief, and the feeling that I was all alone in this and had to do everything I could to fake my way through making it out of there without exposing my under-qualifications of caring for a baby. Even though she was from ME, and I had full rights to keep her, I still felt like a child. 

Could that be added on from the birth, the way I was made to feel like inadequate over using my own body to give birth? And they held me down, 6 nurses, and threatened a cesarean because of my inability to push? I was so angry and screaming at all of them but to no avail. I was determined to be a victim in that groggy, old-programmed mind, and my familiar stubbornness and creaking of bitter tears in my throat came up as I squeezed my eyes and mouth shut and willed everyone to leave me alone when I knew they wouldn't. Because I just felt unheard and unworthy. 

And that's how my innocent, lively, and sensitive daughter came out into the world. Pulled out forcefully. Passed through insensitive, cold doctor's bloody hands, where her frail bloody body stood frozen in the air and I watched in ecstasy, to be thrust onto me and then pulled away after 3 seconds where she lay crying in a bin where the nurse pinched and poked her. My poor baby screamed and screamed bloody murder, and she hasn't stopped screaming. Her eyes still have a faraway look in them, as if she is still in that place and wondering what was happening in that crazy mess.

So yeah, maybe it is still because of my adoption history and feeling ashamed and inadequate, or it is also because of our birth trauma and the need to go over it more thoroughly. Because I do feel terrified when I think about what happened, and I try to forget it even when her little sorrowful eyes look away and struggle when she is feeling out of control. I guess I didn't want to face what I put her through deep down, and I am scared to relive my own trauma of the birth. That is why I blocked her tears a lot of times. But she needs to let them out in order for her body to attain homeostasis. And as do I. I am hoping a birth trauma expert will help us get through this.