Totally agree with orangehead - "any birth can be traumatic and all women deserve support no matter how they give birth".
My personal view is that the method of delivery, like all things relating to pregnancy, birth, motherhood, etc. can get mired down by a stealth competitiveness. A lot of the time this can be innate - a personal sense of guilt at not measuring up to the ideal of pregnancy ("I didn't put on any weight"), childbirth ("I gave birth drugs-free by candelight to quads and didn't tear AND was in my pre-pregnancy jeans three days later..."), to motherhood ("I exclusively breastfed/organically weaned/stayed at home/went back to worklll...etc., etc."). I think we all have an ideal in our heads and, for many of us, if we don't attain those ideals then the guilt can be consuming. I'm not saying everyone is this way, but lots are.
We all try to acheive the birth that feels right for us, whether that's at home in a pool or by elective section and all the variables in between, but often the experience falls short, usually for reasons beyond our control (mother nature, luck, chance, medicine). So it's not surprising that many of us can feel 'cheated' by our experience of birth. And equally, can feel sensitive to the lack of support and empathy with what we've endured. A natural delivery can be very brutal and traumatic - far more so than a straightforward section - but equally a c section can be gruelling and grisly and heart-stoppingly awful and something that takes years to reoover from (I'm still getting over mine...). And whilst someone who has been traumatised by a vaginal delivery can feel overlooked 'as they didn't have a caesarean' a woman recovering from a caesarean can feel equally traumatised and let down by people's perceptions of her delivery ('the easy way out').
When I had my caesarean it was glossed over. "Never mind", friends told me, as if I'd missed out on the secrets to life. Perhaps that WAS just my perception and over-sensitivity on my part but I do recall being saddened when a friend who gave birth two weeks later with no pain relief was hailed as "superwoman" and given all manner of congratulations. And they all sat there discussing the pain (and the ecstasy when it stopped!) whilst I struggled with sitting up straight.
It's so personal and the way to look at it, I think, is to understand that most of us can end up feeling disappointed or traumatised by our birth. Not through unrealistic expectations (mine was to see my children being born and to recover well - neither of which happened) but often because the human body and childbirth is unpredictable and influenced by all manner of external factors beyond our control. And so the aftermath of childbirth is often a confusing time of hormones, sleep deprivation combined with the possibility of a very real sense of disappointment and/or trauma and that can be hard and can take time to process.
Support one another and be kind in our choices. We're all aiming for the same thing - to give birth to healthy babies in a safe and cared-for manner - and it shouldn't be a competition. And understand that perceptions of trauma can be very real to an individual and should be supported - not discounted as a ghoulish exercise in birthing pain one-upmanship.
K