From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] On Behalf Of [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Monday, 6 June 2005 6:36 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [ozmidwifery] sexual abuse and labour
could anyone point in the direction of research about the effects of sexual abuse (childhood or as an adult) has on labour. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine and she finds it difficult to believe that the psychological can interrupt the physiological.
Thanks
Sally
Dear Sally and All
I suggest your friend has never encountered anyone who has been sexually assaulted/abused, although with one in 4 women if she is a midwife then I doubt it. Liz Mullinar, heads up an organisation called ASCA (Advocates for Survivors of Sexual Abuse). She presented at the 2003 Homebirth Australia Conference and was very well received. She noted that labours (of survivors) tend to either have precipitous labours or extremely long labours. Women’s psychological damage rewsults in not wanting to feel the sensations of birth (particularly the more sexual sensations) and works very quickly or holds on hoping never to sense it.
As a survivor of sexual assault I can vouch that I fell into the ‘very long labour’ with number 1. I had an out of body experience and felt that death was imminent (yes I know that there is that death thing around birth but mine was directly related to the assault as I relieved it. I had no urge to push (yes other women have this too) and felt my body closing down when I was directed to give a little push on the next contraction. The sensation of bushing and particularly the full sensation towards my anus made me wish I was dead. I was not scared of birth I was terrified of what came next in my repeat performance of the assault (as it was at knifepoint).
Here comes the sad bit. If I’d have been in the system it probably would have been totally relived with an [EMAIL PROTECTED] I swear if that had happened I would now be in an asylum. But due to a skilled midwife and me being at home a beautiful and EXTREMELY healing birth took place.
Oh and by the way I had previoulsy ‘dealt’ with my assault through 12 months of psychotherapy (several years before) and the whole episode took me by total surprise. Birth and sexual abuse/assault have an amazing link even if the woman can’t articulate it (repressed memory unable to articulate it etc).
Australia’s production line birth and inhumane interventions no doubt force women to relive abuse everyday.
You can contact Liz Mullinar through the ASCA website www.asca.org.au or if you want to I will contact her personally for her references.
Justine
