BIRTH TRAUMA COUNSELLING — GOLD COAST & ONLINE
Your birth experience deserves to be witnessed.
Whatever happened - and however long ago - resolution is possible.
Birth trauma is more common than most people realise - and more complex than 'the main thing is everyone is safe.' Your experience of your birth matters, regardless of the medical outcome. A birth does not need to be medically life-threatening to be genuinely traumatic.
I offer specialist counselling and somatic trauma therapy for women who are still carrying the weight of a birth experience that changed something in them - whether it happened weeks ago or years have passed.
DOES ANY OF THIS FEEL FAMILIAR?
Birth trauma can show up in ways that are hard to name.
You might recognise yourself in some of these:
Intrusive thoughts or flashbacks about the birth that arrive without warning
Feeling disconnected from your body, your baby, or your sense of self as a mother
A sense of grief or loss alongside gratitude that your baby is safe — and guilt about holding both
Avoiding conversations about pregnancy or birth, or feeling unable to tell your story
Hypervigilance, difficulty sleeping, or a constant sense of bracing
Fear of a subsequent pregnancy, or replaying what happened when you think about the future
Feeling dismissed by medical staff, or as though what happened to you didn't count
You are not overreacting. What happened to you matters. And your nervous system is still responding to it - because it hasn't yet had the support it needs to come to rest.
WHAT BIRTH TRAUMA CAN INCLUDE
There is no threshold your birth has to meet to have been traumatic
Trauma is deeply subjective.
What matters is the impact on you — not the medical classification of your birth.
Emergency caesarean or unplanned surgical birth
Instrumental birth (forceps or vacuum)
Prolonged or very fast labour
Baby requiring NICU or special care admission
Unexpected complications or medical interventions
Feeling unheard, dismissed, or unsupported during labour or birth
Not being informed about what was happening to your body
Post-birth physical injury or recovery
Birth as a trigger for previous trauma or abuse
Traumatic birth from a previous pregnancy resurfacing in a current one
HOW I WORK WITH BIRTH TRAUMA
We begin by building safety — in the room, in our relationship, and in your body
I work with birth trauma from a somatic, nervous-system-centred foundation. What this means in practice is that we don't begin by retelling the birth story in detail. We begin by building safety - in the room, in our relationship, and in your body.
Trauma lives in the body long after the event has passed. The intrusive thoughts, the hypervigilance, the disconnection, the physical bracing - these are your nervous system still running the survival responses it activated during the birth. The work is to support those responses to complete and to begin restoring a felt sense of safety that the experience interrupted.
I also work with the identity dimension of birth trauma - the grief of the birth experience you hoped for, the impact on your sense of yourself as a mother, and the relational threads that run from your birth into your relationship with your baby and your partner.
Whether your birth was recent or years ago, this work can move at whatever pace your system needs.
PREPARING FOR A SUBSEQUENT PREGNANCY
Working through the previous experience — not to erase it, but to integrate it
For women considering or navigating a pregnancy after a traumatic birth, I offer support through the particular anxiety and grief that can accompany that decision. Working through the previous experience - not in order to erase it, but to integrate it - can significantly shift the experience of a subsequent pregnancy and birth.
“
I felt broken, like something had been taken from me. I was grateful my baby was safe, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't.
f”
ALSO LOOKING FOR SUPPORT WITH
Other areas I specialise in
01
Fertility & Infertility
The emotional, psychological, and identity toll of the fertility journey — including IVF, reproductive trauma, and the body that feels like it has failed you.
02
Perinatal grief & loss
Miscarriage, stillbirth, TFMR, newborn and infant loss — the grief that is often invisible, and rarely well supported.
03
Perinatal Counselling
Holding a space for you as you journey through pregnancy and beyond — your transition to motherhood, your changing identity, your empowered sense of self.
READY TO BEGIN?
You don't have to keep carrying this.
The first step is a free 15-20 minute call. We'll talk about what you've been through, how I work, and whether this feels like the right fit. There is no pressure.
Or reach out directly