Neuro-Affirming Birth Debrief & Trauma Recovery

While often one debriefing provides the clarity needed to close specific "loops," many mothers, particularly those navigating neurodivergence or complex matrescence, benefit from ongoing reassurance and guidance to address the sadness and grief that often follow this process. Follow-up appointments are available to deepen your healing and ensure your long-term well-being is supported.

These sessions are a powerful first step in addressing birth-related, emotionally charged feelings. Parents who feel the emotional anguish is too overwhelming around a baby’s birth may avoid retraumatisation by reassessing whether it would be more appropriate to shift to the 3 Steps Rewind method, a gentle, somatic-based alternative to EMDR with a non-retraumatising approach. This allows us to reduce the heavy emotional "charge" of a memory without requiring you to relive every distressing detail.

By identifying specific triggers and physiological responses, we collaborate to move from a state of "survival mode" toward healing. This integrated approach restores trust in your body and helps you feel more grounded in your daily life. While this service guides reflection and coping, I do not provide a diagnosis and treatment for PTSD - post-traumatic stress disorder; for this, you should contact a psychiatrist.

There is no time limit for debriefing. Whether your birth was 6 weeks ago or six years ago, or you are now thinking of having another child and feel ready to understand and come to terms with your previous birth. Many women who may feel their birth was traumatic find that this reflective process, offers reassurance and understanding, and can shift the way they feel about it. It is never too late to find healing.

I offer the option of a home visit, here in Malaga, as many parents struggle to access assistance in the post-partum period and therefore delay processing the emotional experience of what happened with a trained mental health professional. Alternatively, we can arrange this one-off consultation online.

You don’t need to have everything figured out. You can request your maternity notes (in Spain, this is your 'Informe de Parto'  you can contact the hospital where you gave birth and request it through the Servicio de Atencion al Paciente from the hospital). If you gave birth with a midwife in the NHS, you can request your maternity records submitting a Subject Access Request (SAR). In the Netherlands, you can request your notes from your midwife (verloskundige in Dutch). If you were followed in pregnancy and delivery by a First-line Midwife (Eerstelijns) or by a Second-line Midwife (Tweedelijns). These notes can be beneficial for factual clarity about the events around a baby’s birth from the GP, midwife, or health visitor perspective, but your "lived experience" following the birth is the most important document we have.

Whether you navigated maternity care in NL, the NHS or in Spain, I understand the specific systemic nuances you’ve been through.

Your story is sacred, and your privacy is my priority. In accordance with GDPR and ethical counselling standards, all information shared during our session—including your birth notes and personal history—is kept strictly confidential and stored on a secure, encrypted platform.

I do not share your data with third parties without your explicit written consent, except in rare cases where there is a legal obligation or a risk of harm to yourself or others. As a graduate of the ACC I share and abide by the same Code of Conduct and Privacy Policy.

Yes, and many partners find it genuinely valuable to be part of this process. Your birth partner often carries their own version of what happened, and hearing your experience through a structured, trauma-informed conversation can deepen their understanding of what you went through and what you need now. Partners may also benefit from the chance to discuss a difficult birth openly, particularly if they've been holding their own distress quietly in order to support you.

It's worth knowing that when both of you are present, the session naturally holds more, two perspectives, two emotional responses, and often questions that neither of you has voiced before. In some cases, this means a single 90-minute session provides everything you both need. In others, particularly where the birth involved complex trauma or where each of you is processing at a different pace, a follow-up session may be helpful to give your individual experience the space it deserves.

If you're unsure whether to include your partner, we can talk it through in your discovery call. There's no wrong answer — what matters is that you feel safe enough to be honest in the room.

Many mothers carry distress from a birth that did not go the way they had hoped, even when there was no obstetric emergency. You don't need to have experienced a difficult birth with a midwife, a medical intervention, or a complication for your feelings to be valid. A birth may have been confusing, lonely, or frightening in ways that are hard to explain to someone who wasn't there. Some women have questions some years later that they never felt able to ask at the time. Others feel upset or angry about decisions that were made without their input — about the medical assessments and decision-making process by the professionals involved, or plans made during pregnancy that were abandoned without explanation. If your birth experience is still affecting you, or if you're concerned it may affect a future pregnancy, you deserve the chance to talk it through with someone who will help you understand what happened and give you the answers you need.