to ask are traumatic birth debriefs worth it?

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Sorry I'm posting here for traffic and also to get a wider variety of responses - i want the good and the ugly.

Ive got my birth debrief next week via telephone. Im not sure i see the point. I do have lots of emotions/ regrets/ difficulties moving on from the birth (6 months ago) but don't see how these can be helped by a quick telephone call.

Has anybody had one recently? what did it involve? any advice or questions you found useful to ask? (i know this will be quite individual but just wanting to see what others experiences were). just don't see how this is going to help at all (and i do feel i need help).

I am a doula and many women find it good to talk about their traumatic births. There are also external charity organisations that help. It helps to hear the facts. It helps to be listened to. It helps to have your feelings acknowledged.

I am also a homeopath and a reiki practitioner (rarely all at the same time!) and I see the healing power of acknowledging trauma, looking at it and making peace with it. It is part of our story but it doesn't have to be a scratch in the record that is difficult for us every time we revisit the memory.

FranklyFrost yes mine was like that. They had left me alone to birth premie twins and when the staff re-entered the room to find DS had arrived and wasn't breathing, it turned out they hadn't stocked the delivery room with essential equipment so his resus was delayed a bit.

They also "lost my notes", "preferred me not to take notes" and they would provide a transcript ..... obviously none of it ever materialised!

Yes, mine was. I had it over the phone due to COVID. The midwife was very professional, kind and open. No arse covering - just total acknowledgement of what I was saying and an apology that the care I received wasn't 100% right. I found it really helped because before I'd blamed myself for not communicating in the right way, but actually it was the midwifery staff who were at fault, not me.

Mine wasn't great either. The consultant who made mistakes in my care and was rude to me walked into the debrief half way through unexpectedly. Then she argued with every part of my experience and told me most women have good experiences and their performance data proves it. Like a PP said, it was very much about arse covering rather than helping me to process and understand what happened. The matron in charge of the debrief was very good and listened carefully, but the consultant was awful.

In the end I made a complaint to the Parliamentary Health Ombudsman and it was upheld. This is the only thing that helped my emotions. They have to admit that they were wrong, and I was right and now they have to put things right for other women.

I also think the debrief should happen when a woman wants it. I had to wait 6 weeks.

The matron went through the feedback/debrief I submitted and looked at my notes. So it was very much led by me.

I hope you have a better experience and it sounds like you will if you have gaps and want to know what happened. Your hospital notes should help them to uncover this for you. Or you could ask for a copy of your notes yourself and piece it together? Have you thought about debriefing with a counsellor too? I did this too and it helped.

I offer them as part of my role. It has amazed me how much the service is used. I’ve done over 60 since last May. I like to think they help- I’m not able to do face to face, so I do them over the phone with the option to call me again if they would like a face to face meeting when things are relaxed. The majority of my debriefs are for clarification of what happened- traumatic births tend to happen at very fraught moments; lots happening, staff appearing seemingly out of the walls, everyone talks at once, stress levels are sky high, and labour hormones send emotions high. Just sitting and unpicking the process helps many women. To have your feelings and fears validated. They may just have heard a single word that has set things off, and just to have that one thing explained puts minds at rest. I call, and then just let the parents talk. Some talk for half an hour, some for 2 hours. I always follow up the discussion, and the women can call me at any time. It’s never a one off.
I’m just there to listen and answer questions, not to judge. If I can’t answer the question straightaway, I’ll get back to you, and if I still cant, I’ll find someone who can. I’ll If you want to discuss quality of care, I’ll point you in the direction of the right person. If you have a complaint, I’ll give you the details. If you want to have a meeting with, say, a consultant, I’ll come too if you’d like, and we can write a list of questions together.
That is my personal model. I’m not sure how others do it, but it’s working in our hospital, I think.

I also call within a week of the referral, even if we don’t do the debrief for a while. It’s important to know that we are listening, and she’s not just a tick on a list. I’ve only been doing them since last May, and I’m evolving it over time. I’m really interested to follow this thread, actually. I want to offer the best service I can.

I had a birth debrief about 4 months after my traumatic experience in 2017. It helped in so far as they were able to explain to me exactly what happened and why they did certain things. It definitely didn’t bring the feelings to a close for me though.

It took me until late last year to realise that I needed to speak to someone properly about it all so arranged some CBT counselling via my company health insurance. For me this was a god send, I had 12 sessions with a very sympathetic counsellor and we managed to trace all of my issues back to feelings of failure and so were able to work out strategies to help me cope. My anxiety and depression scores were very high when we started the sessions and when we finished they had come down dramatically. Just talking to someone about what happened, from my own perspective, helped massively. I’d really recommend looking into CBT.

@Emptybox. Wow.. what an amazing service you offer. It is a huge thing to hold space for so many people who have had traumatic births, Thank you, on behalf of all those women who need this space, This is part of what the post natal process should be but often visiting midwives do not have access to all of the information that women need to debrief properly. Yes, by phone is not ideal, but I wonder how many more people take advantage of this as it is so much easier to arrange a time on the phone than to mobilise your post natal self and baby to leave the house and all that extra effort it takes to make and attend an appointment. Yes face to face is better but if 20 women would make a face to face appointment and 60 women would make a phone appointment, then maybe there are some good things that have come out of the pandemic.

I had one in 2014. It was only 2 weeks after birth as a midwife post natal had said something which made me panic about my baby's health. We were shocked to find a panel of 3 people, which included some sort of either HR or legal person. It wasn't at all what I expected, very formal, step by step talking through the birth, but I was still a complete emotional wreck and I found it very arse covering on their part. I actually felt quite traumatised by it, no empathy and couldn't remember anything they said, it was too soon for me I think.

I arranged my own counselling when I fell pregnant with my second 2 years later. They helped prepare me to ask for a C section. I met a fabulous junior doctor who was lovely when I asked for the section. He got all my notes out and went through it all again, calmly and kindly. He reassured me that I could have a C section (after checking with his consultant). He also made me realise that what had happened wasn't as dangerous for my DD as I had interpreted in my mind. It was a really positive experience.

So really mixed views I'm afraid, I guess it depends what happened in your birth and how much they want to cover their tracks, and who is doing it.

I had one after birth of dc1. It just made me even crosser because they insisted that what had happened could not possibly have happened. There no-one came for about 5 minutes after midwife had yelled at us to press the emergency buzzer after dd was born. Fortunately she was ok. That was after having been left to labour pretty much alone with my DH repeatedly going out to ask for help. No-one had shown me properly how to use gas and air. When midwife finally arrived, she looked pretty horrified and asked if I was up for giving birth in the bath as I was probably now not going to be able to walk to the delivery room down the corridor.

On the other hand, the debrief was exceptionally helpful in helping me decide that DC 2 was going to be a home birth.

Yes, absolutely 100% worth it. I spoke to a midwife who couldn’t have been more professional nor more reassuring. Without going into detail, she gave me the confidence to go on to have my second baby without fear. You have nothing to lose by enquiring.

I had a birth debrief 5 years after the event when my second child was due. It really helped me to separate the fact from my memories and decide whether to go for an EMCS or VBAC. I took VBAC and although I needed a ventouse, it went ok and I felt glad that I'd made that decision.

I found mine hugely useful and had it about a year after the birth. It was a traumatic labour for me and there has been some long lasting damage, but there was no fault on the medics part. It helped me to know why things happened and got me to a place where I was prepared to consider another baby which was a massive step. My labour was very long and I was very hazy on the details of it so it was good to get some information on that.