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One in 25 patients experience PTSD following childbirth. Risk factors include unplanned cesarean delivery, operative vaginal delivery, obstetric emergencies such as cord prolapse, neonatal intensive care admission, previous trauma, and severe physical complications. Early recognition of PTSD is imperative. It can have a significant impact on the health of both the birthing parent and the infant. It is associated with difficulty in bonding with the infant, breast-feeding, or engaging in postnatal care. A multidisciplinary approach between obstetricians, psychiatrists, and other mental health providers is recommended for management. Treatment may involve eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, cognitive behavioral therapy, and pharmacotherapy. It is reasonable to perform cesarean delivery for maternal request in patients who are well informed of the risks, benefits, and alternatives.
This chapter provides an understanding of the ways that past trauma can affect women in pregnancy and postnatally. It provides guidance on how to recognise and understand the symptoms of post traumatic stress and information on why a traumatic event can continue to affect a person deeply, even if it was a long time ago, other circumstances have moved on or it is not considered ‘traumatic’ by others. The focus is on maternity and birth-related traumas, although the principles apply to other types of trauma. Evidence-based techniques will help you understand and work through your reactions to trauma and will help you put intrusive memories into the past so that you can untangle the past and present. This chapter covers working with self-blame and tackling other consequences of trauma such as feelings of disconnection as well as practical tips on talking to loved ones and professionals in order to get the right support at this time.
To examine health care practitioners’ views of the support women, partners, and the couple relationship require when affected by birth trauma, barriers to gaining such support, and potential improvements.
Background:
Ongoing distress following psychologically traumatic childbirth, also known as birth trauma, can affect women, partners, and the couple relationship. Birth trauma can lead to post traumatic stress symptoms (PTSS) or disorder (PTSD). Whilst there is a clear system of care for a PTSD diagnosis, support for the more prevalent experience of birth trauma is not well-defined.
Method:
An online survey of health care practitioners’ views of the support parents require for birth trauma, barriers to accessing support, and potential improvements. Practitioners were recruited in 2018 and the sample for the results presented in the article ranged from 95 to 110.
Results:
Practitioners reported differing needs of support for women, partners, and the couple as a unit. There was correlation between practitioners reporting having the skills and knowledge to support couples and feeling confident in giving support. The support most commonly offered by practitioners to reduce the impact on the couple relationship was listening to the couple. However practitioners perceived the most effective support was referral to a debriefing service. Practitioners observed several barriers to both providing support and parents accessing support, and improvements to birth trauma support were suggested.
Conclusions:
Practitioners indicate that some women, partners, and the couple as a unit require support with birth trauma and that barriers exist to accessing effective support. The support that is currently provided often conflicts with practitioners’ perception of what is most effective. Practitioners indicate a need to improve the identification of parents who need support with birth trauma, and more suitable services to support them.
In this chapter we discuss a number of aspects related to how women experience and engage with life stressors, including traumatic events. We seek to answer some of the questions concerning whether, how, and why women may experience stress differently from men.
Adverse events during the perinatal period have traditionally been thought to contribute to the risk of febrile seizures although an association has not been found in large epidemiological studies. Disease-discordant twins provide a means to assess the role of non-shared environmental factors while matching for confounding factors and avoiding difficulties of epidemiological studies in singletons. This study aimed to examine the association of obstetric events and febrile seizures in a community-based twin study. Twenty-one twin pairs discordant for febrile seizures were ascertained from a community-based twin register. Obstetric events were scored using the McNeil-Sjöström Scale for Obstetric Complications and expressed as a summary score (OC score). The frequency of individual obstetric events in affected and unaffected twins, the within-pair differences in OC scores and other markers of perinatal risk including birthweight, birth order and Apgar scores were examined. No significant difference was found in the frequency of individual obstetric events, nor in OC scores between affected and unaffected twins. No differences in birth weight, birth order, 1- or 5-minute Apgar scores were observed. Our results confirm previous findings that obstetric events are not associated with the risk of febrile seizures.
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