Healing from the guilt of a childbirth gone wrong

Rising up and moving forward beyond the wounds and trauma that childbirth can cause

For us women, when we become mothers, childbirth is an intense moment that pushes us to our limits. Every birth is unique, and for the rest of our lives, we will remember every detail of how it unfolded. Childbirth is a challenge that demands we push beyond our limits and continually improve our sense of self-mastery—what English speakers call “empowerment.” In some cases, we feel happy with how the birth went; we are satisfied and fulfilled, and perhaps even proud of having made it through. In other cases, we may feel intense guilt about what happened. We may then be consumed by remorse and regret for months, even years… So how can we heal this deep emotional wound within ourselves?

An irrevocable decision to erase the remorse following the birth of our first child

Personally, I experienced this after the birth of our first child. It so happened that the baby was born in the car. Ten minutes after the birth, we arrived at the clinic. My baby was then taken care of by the hospital staff and taken to a room far away from me for two hours. Without me realizing it at the time, the baby was traumatized by this premature separation. His dad was a helpless witness to it. For two long hours, the newborn screamed in distress and despair in the incubator where he had been placed. Back home a few days later, we felt that our baby had been left with lasting effects from this trauma. He seemed nervous, anxious, and unsettled to us. For several years, we were consumed by remorse and blamed ourselves, saying to ourselves: “Why did we go to the clinic? We should never have left. We would have been better off staying home for the birth…”

How can you move forward in this situation and heal yourself from this sense of regret and guilt toward your baby? Here is a four-step protocol.

1- Accept what has been and cannot be changed

Pastor Reinhold Niebuhr wrote this Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” One day, a friend to whom I confided this guilt I carried inside said something that made me think: “Your baby chose the circumstances of his birth himself.” Little by little, I had to accept that my baby had indeed chosen how to be born and that he had within him the strength to heal from this trauma, just as I had been led to heal within myself from the traumatic situations I had experienced. Understanding that everything is as it should be isn’t easy in this kind of situation, but it’s a fundamental step toward making peace within yourself with this unsatisfying past.

2- Humbly acknowledge that you don’t feel fully satisfied

Accepting what happened doesn’t mean denying our dissatisfaction—quite the opposite. We aren’t being asked to say, “The birth went really well, I loved it, and if I had to do it again, I’d do the same thing.” At this stage, we need to understand that life is a learning experience. With sincere humility, we must allow ourselves the right to make mistakes and to be imperfect. It’s about staying honest with ourselves and understanding that there’s a gap between the ideal we’ve dreamed of deep down and the reality we’ve actually experienced. It’s essential to understand and accept that we haven’t yet become the “perfect” person we’d so much like to be.

3- Resolve to do better next time

In life, our mistakes are part of our learning process, and our frustrations and dissatisfactions show us the way forward. Deep down, if we feel that something from the past didn’t sit right with us, it’s an invitation to do better next time. Our feelings are our inner compass. In our personal case, our remorse at having rushed to the clinic in a panic was so strong that we told ourselves, “Never again.” We couldn’t change the birth of our first baby. However, we made a firm decision never to go to a hospital for the birth of our future babies. This decision was irrevocable, because it came from our hearts. In the name of all the love we felt for our cherished babies, we were going to offer them a birth with all the respect they deserve. To do this, we were going to welcome them into our home, even though this remained a challenge that still frightened us at the time, of course.

4- Improve and rejoice in the journey traveled

Beyond the events that traumatized us in the past, we must realize that life goes on and that it will present us with challenging situations again in one way or another. We are students of life, which is tasked with guiding us with kindness to encourage us to keep improving, to do better next time. That is where our true redemption and our full healing lie. What is valuable is the person we have managed to become thanks to the progress we have made. In my own case, I went on to give birth to ten more children, under various circumstances across four different continents. It was a real challenge for me that pushed me to my limits. For my subsequent babies, all welcomed within the intimacy of our marriage, I was able to appreciate their inner calm and tranquility. Little by little, this satisfaction made up for the deep dissatisfaction I had carried within me following the birth of my first baby. The joy of seeing my newborns so peaceful replaced within me the remorse of seeing my first baby distressed and anxious. Little by little, I felt the satisfaction of giving my babies births that increasingly aligned with an ideal I feel deep in my heart as a mother. I even found myself thinking that, if I were a baby again myself, I would want to be welcomed in that way…

To conclude, a top-level athlete is someone who has learned from their mistakes, bounced back from their failures, and overcome their fears and frustrations to keep moving closer to their dreams, beyond their own limits. They have become a champion through their efforts, courage, determination, and resilience. Some compare childbirth to a marathon, and it is true that, in many ways, this comparison is apt. Giving birth lays us bare, face to face with ourselves, with our strengths and weaknesses, with our power and our limits, and with life itself, which wants to see us become the best version of ourselves. What matters is the person we have become in our desire to offer our babies a birth with all the respect and love they deserve.

This article was written by Claire Loiseleur, mother of eleven children all born within the heart of marital intimacy, through our conscious choice to offer our babies a birth with all the Love and Respect they deserve, and co-author of the book and documentary:

Filled with music and colours, and enriched with numerous captions and voice-over explanations, the documentary EXPERIENCING BIRTH NATURALLY AND PEACEFULLY beautifully complements the teachings shared in the book NATURAL BIRTH WITHIN THE INTIMACY OF THE COUPLE.

This film is available as a streaming video, with instant viewing through a private personal link offering unlimited access.

Read more articles on the topic of respectful childbirth.

A list of these 22 articles, along with a brief summary of each, is available on the following page:

The book GIVING BIRTH NATURALLY AND FREELY AS A COUPLE is part of the Lights for a New World books presented on the Youtube channel and Facebook page entitled : Lights for a New World

The expression « Lights for a New World » is explained on the following page :