06/02/2025
This is one of the reasons I feel called to this work:
“At least you have a healthy baby.”
If you’ve given birth and felt dismissed by those words, you’re not alone. Because what that sentence really says is: your experience doesn’t matter.
That your pain, your fear, your body, your voice—all of it is secondary.
Too often, that one sentence becomes a lid placed over a mother’s trauma. A way to hush her pain and shrink her story. But birth is never “just one day.” It imprints itself into our bodies, our nervous systems, our memories. And for 1 in 3 women in the U.S., that imprint is traumatic.
For 1 in 6, the symptoms are so severe they qualify for PTSD. Not sadness. Not the “baby blues.” Actual trauma. And still, we’re told to be grateful. To move on. To focus on the baby.
Birth trauma doesn’t always stem from emergencies or complications. It often stems from how a woman is treated:
➡️ being ignored
➡️ coerced into decisions
➡️ touched without consent
➡️ stripped of her autonomy
And the ripple effects can be devastating—impacting bonding, postpartum mental health, and even leading to su***de, the leading cause of maternal death in the U.S.
So no, “a healthy baby” is not the only outcome that matters.
The mother matters, too. Her body. Her voice. Her trauma. Her joy. Her healing. She is more than a vessel. She is the center.
If you’re preparing for birth—or supporting someone who is—you deserve more. You deserve informed, empowered, whole-person care.
The Mama Pathway is my complete birth prep course, created to change this—to offer education, empowerment, and a path forward for expecting parents and those healing from past births. It’s rooted in 40+ years of experience as a midwife, MD, and mother.
Because a truly healthy birth means the baby and the mother emerge whole. You deserve that.
💛 Learn more and enroll at the link below.
If you’ve ever been told “at least you have a healthy baby,” how did that land for you? I’d love to hear your story—or simply hold space for it in the comments below.
https://avivaromm.com/mama-pathway/
