"I felt sheepish about calling it trauma"

A baby loss charity from Essex has told us that 'too many women feel they can't talk about their traumatic births'.

It's after we revealed that around one in 20 new mums develop PTSD as a result of complications during birth and pregnancy

Jaimie Prudent, a mother of two in Essex, is an example of someone who doesn't feel they could talk about birth trauma.

She tells us it was only when she realised she couldn't speak about her first birth did she realise it was birth trauma.

Living in Colchester, Mrs Prudent encourages everyone to speak about it to help the healing process: "I was hesitant to call it trauma because I felt sheepish about that."

"The cultural encouragement is to say 'my baby's healthy and that's the most important thing' and of course that's important but I'd like to encourage any parent who felt their birth was difficult or traumatic in anyway, your experience and your feelings about it matter.

"And sometimes the only way to process those feelings is to share them."

Mrs Prudent tells us she sought support for her second birth because she "couldn't image going through all of that again" and it really helped her have a "very healing experience".

She encourages others to do the same: "For people that may have had a difficult experience, there's a lot of healing ahead."

She continues, "I was really overwhelmed and afraid when I got pregnant a second time. I was worried I would have a similar experience and it would take me months, years, to get back to a place of peace and stability. But now I can look back at my first birth, which I felt was so traumatic, and I feel much more peace and gentleness about it than I used to."

Mrs Prudent tells us there was "so much" she didn't know about how to interact with the services on offer.

"Within the maternity services, you can ask the midwife for continuity of care, you can ask to be put on a different team, you can ask for anything, there's so much I didn't know in my first pregnancy which would have been so helpful."

Greatest Hits Radio carried out an investigation revealing around 30,000 women experience trauma before, during or after giving birth every year.

Jenny Bradshaw works for Abigail's Footsteps and she believes maternity services need more financial support.

She said: "I feel women often that think giving birth is something that you can and should be able to just do because it's something women have done for millions of years, so it should just be simple.

"However, the reality is that it isn't simple and that there are a plethora of things that can go wrong.

"One of the reasons for this is because unfortunately maternity services are not as well funded as they should be.

"We have a very high rate of birth trauma in the UK because our maternity services are just not able to offer a good enough quality of care to their users.

"It means they are affected, their children are affected and that is only going to cost more in the long run - with more individuals not living their best quality life that they can.

"Lots of mums would agree that the early stages of being a parent can feel really isolating and we need to find ways to make women feel supported", says Jenny from Abigail's Footsteps.

"That means giving them an opportunity and a space to talk about what they been through."

Find out more about Birth Trauma, including where you can get support.