Living with Trauma

How we can experience trauma after a pregnancy loss

As a child, I spent hours in the woods behind our cottage in northern Michigan.  We were fearless in those back woods, immune to the dangers that existed, never worrying about all of the problems the woods could hold: the rumbling creek, dotted with slick rocks; Brown Recluse spiders lying in wait; ledges of steep inclined earth, threatening a tumble that, were one of us to trip, would leave us with, at a minimum, a broken bone.

But when we were seven and eight years old, we did not see any of these dangers. It’s only in my almost 40-year-old brain that I shudder at all of these hazards. I only see them after I’ve experienced years of pain, trauma, loss, and grief. I see them after a Sunday car ride home on backroads leads to striking a deer. I see them after a family reunion around the bonfire ends with someone being raced to the hospital after inflicting third-degree burns. And, I see them after four positive pregnancy tests ends in loss. It is only through living that we start to see everything that can go wrong, because we’ve been there before.

After a pregnancy loss, we can experience symptoms related to complex trauma. Complex trauma is defined as exposure to multiple traumatic events over time. It can be experiencing a traumatic event, such as miscarriage, only to have it later compounded with another miscarriage, a stillbirth, or infertility.  Complex trauma builds on itself, and right when we feel like we might be catching our breath from the previous traumatic event, another one occurs.