birth trauma and suicide

[applejuice]

I do not know if this is the correct place for this thread, but has any one read the study done nearly 20 years ago by Dr. Bertil Jacobsen in Sweden in which he studied 412 suicides btw the yrs 1984-1987 and correlated them w/ their birth experiences and traumas and found a relationship btw the trauma that "marked them at birth and the method of suicide.

Refer to OMNI November 1988

Refer to www.noetic.org/Ions/publications Winter 1988 Volume 9 number 29

Refer to Acta Psychiatrica 1987 Volume 76 pages 364-371.

He found a relationship btw strangulation and cord problems during the birth process. He found a relationship btw the implementation of forceps and suicide by a mechincal means. He found a relationship btw breathing problems and suffocation.

When we are born we are "marked" by the events which are present at our birth. I do know that Scientologists practice a quiet birth w/ no sound ( of a sort?) so as not to impede the child w/ certain problems later in life. I am not of that belief, but there may be something to justify this method.

Based on the information given in this study, is there any wonder that the 1960's saw so much hallucinigenic drug activity b/c, based on this info researched in this study, the mothers in the 1940's were given twilight sleep routinely, so the children born to these mothers may have craved that state of mind when confronted w/ the stress of adolesence and young adulthood.

I do know that drugs have always been "here" been no where near the saturation we saw in the 1960's/1970's.

For the record, I was born at home - no drugs - and never used drugs. My own children were born at home - no drugs - and no drugs problems. We do live in a large metropolitan area so we are not hermits.

This was personal choice, but also I had no real drive to change my mental state in any real manner. Real life is exciting and stimulating enough for me.

Maybe I am just boring.

Anyway,... let me know what you think.....

[Celine]

I've heard about this theory before - someone in california was also doing some research on it - and the website also talked about how people even make decisions differently based on their own birth..... if i can find the website again, i'll post it for you.

[khrisday]

great- so my dd is going to suffocate herself

[Lucky Charm]

mine will too.

Nice

[DancerMom]

Now wait a minute...

I definitely buy the theory, because I think that a person can be affected by what happens to them that young. But I also believe that loving parents can help a child overcome birth trauma. I bet that those people whose suicides corresponded to their birth traumas had extenuating circumstances. I mean, if someone doesn't want to kill themselves, the theory is irrelevent, you know?

I just think it's incentive to work to make birth as gentle as possible.

[lorijds]

I honestly have a hard time buying this. How many babies are born with at least one cord loop around their neck? At least 1/3 in my experience.

I myself was a forcepts baby, but have no desire (yet anyhow ) to kill myself by a mechanical means.

How we birth *does* affect our lives, that much I agree with wholeheartedly. But it is not the *only* factor.

[gurumama]

whoa, whoa, whoa

no one is saying if *your* baby had a birth trauma issue that they're going to commit suicide in a correlative manner.

the study simply looked at people who DID commit suicide and find a correlation between birth trauma and method of suicide.

it's not predicting suicide or looking at birth trauma as a causation of suicide. it's just looking at the relationship bt the two.

of course a nurturing environment helps to relieve the trauma. nurture has a huge impact on nature.

I agree with dancermom--this is an incentive to make birth gentler.

one thought, though--if one played this theory out, is there a correlation bt suicide by slashing wrists/stabbing and c/s?

[AdinaL]

interesting concept.

However it falls into that class of studies that is looking for simple easy answers....And some questions were not asked...

Did the family have a history of mental problems?

Were these kids abused?

what else might have influenced this choice to kill themselves?

I don't buy that they way you are born causes you to kill yourself anymore that I buy that extended breasfeeding causes you child to be gay.

the only thing I might think about would be the method in which you kill yourself....if that sort of memory might trigger a need to go out the same way you came in when you make the choice to kill yourself.

But as for a violent birth causing suicide...well then I am pretty sure I should be dead. I was breech, placenta previa and two weeks early. My mom was hemorrhaging and had general anaesthesia and a c-sec. I would be really at the top of the list for offing my self.

[MysticHealerMom]

Good points, gurumama. I wanted to suggest a book I read along these lines. It really drove home the gentle birth approach to me. (Along with Birth w/o Violence by Fredric LeBoyer). The book is Reclaiming the Spirtuality of Birth by Benig Hauger. The title doesn't imply what the book is really about. She did some regression work with folks, and found that people born from really traumatic births, tended to carry this baggage around with them. I have to agree that the care you receive after birth will help release the pain inflicted by a traumatic birth. Some of the stories were really moving and strong. It's still a correlary statement, however, by working with these people, she was able to help them overcome their issues. She is a psychologist (I'm pretty sure) and was using hypnosis to regress people to their own births.

For me it boiled down to wanting a gentile birth for my kiddo, as much as possible, and it behooves me to become as prepared to that end so that I don't succumb to unnessary intervention. Emergencies are another matter, of course.

Another thought, current accepted developmental psychology doesn't believe that the brain is fully evolved enough at birth to capture and recall what happened during birth - this is based on the lack of neurons that will be developed within the next few months after birth. I don't personally believe there isn't enough there to hold this information, but it definately gets fuzzier as you get older.

[~member~]

Interesting theory. I have thought about this alot, but in terms of just daily existence. I was a forceps baby, no drugs. I am the only one in my family who suffers from migraines. I always wondered if my birth experience had anything to do with that. Also, the way that we make the choices in our life. The dr's basically 'forced' me out, my mother did not want to be in the hospital and was fighting vehemently. they had to strap her down and even went so far as to binding her wrists to the table and her feet to the ...feety things (lol-I can't remember what they are called).
I just 'jump' into things. And if anything feels like it is being 'forced' upon me, I will fight like a tiger, even for really mundane things (like riding the school bus-lol, I could probably count the times I rode that bus on my fingers and toes, lol)

I see correlations like that in my sisters and my cousins and other children of births I have attended. The easy births seem to help the kids grow to be more of the easy-going type of child, no matter the home life. I attended two 'hard' births, and now those two are 18 and 19 yrs old. They are tough! Very strong willed and very stubborn (kinda like how they were born, with a tenacity for life, like they 'really' wanted to live life kwim?).

Both my dd's were born surrounded by ppl ( i think i hold the record at the hospital for te most ppl in the delivery room lol) and they are both extremely social!

ok, i'll quit as this has gotten long!
looking forward to others comments

[lorijds]

*Another thought, current accepted developmental psychology doesn't believe that the brain is fully evolved enough at birth to capture and recall what happened during birth - this is based on the lack of neurons that will be developed within the next few months after birth. *

Sounds like the argument they used to use....we don't need to anesthesia when performing circumcisions....their system isn't mature enough to feel pain.

I agree we need to keep birth as gentle as possible. I guess I don't see the need to spend such money on research to see if how someone kills themself corresponds to a specific birth trauma. Well great, neat trivia to know, how about using all that money to pay for a doula for every woman, or buy every woman a copy of Henci Goers book "The Thinking Woman's GUide to a Better Birth" or using the money to lobby congress and the insurance industry to legalize all forms of midwifery and make midwifery care more accessible to every woman...

I just think such research, while perhaps intersting, is basically useless and serves little purpose.

Just my opinion, of course.

[WinterBaby]

Do you think perhaps the correlation might have more to do with what a person has heard an unconciously internalized about their birth rather than the actual birth? Like.. having heard conversations about needing forceps/having a cord difficulty/mother being administered or wanting or needing drugs to cope etc. And that this could play out on an unconcious level once a person starts entertaining notions of wishing they had never been born?

[applejuice]

Thank you everyone for your responses.

Dr. Bertil Jacobsen did say that this study in no way stated that EVERY person born w/ cord compression or breathing problems at the time of birth would do away w/ themselves by lack of oxygen, or that ALL forceps babies would die of a suicide by mechanical means.

He studied 412 suicides and studied their problems at birth and using a control group, he found a correlationship btw the method of suicide and problems at birth.

The exact study is in the references above. I can also find others.

The main point that I find interesting is that we already know that animals are marked by events at birth. Baby ducks follow the first thing that they see moving after hatching.

I know that we are human beings, not ducks. However we know the gestational and dependency period is longer and more profound in human beings. Perhaps then, we should be more respectful of the "markings" we make and leave on a new, little psyche.

American obstetrics certainly has no plans to change based on this study, or any study like it.

All of this, of course, IMHO.

[Tanibani]

I've read about this type of thing in The Secret Life of The Unborn Child by Thomas Verny, MD.

My memory is fuzzy... Verny is a psychologist (?) with extensive, clinical experience dealing with troubled persons in psychotherapy. Via his experience, he has learned that many deeply troubled patients (when put under deep hypnosis) actually have in utero memories/birth memories and depending on how bad or good they were, affect the life of the person.

He founded this group (I think)
http://www.birthpsychology.com/

He gave some nice examples (like the pianist who "knew" some piece, eventhough he never studied it. Turns out his mother used to play it all the time while pg.)

But most of the stories are quite disturbing. Many hypnotists have experiences with clients, for example, who have unexplained headaches on one side of their head their entire lives. They get put under and the source is identified: birth using forceps. Once this comes to light, the problem disappears.

Verny’s main point is that that what the mother thinks/feels is preceived quite clearly by the baby, so it is important that the mother be happy, relaxed and stress-free AND think positive thoughts and send loving feelings to her baby. (When I read Mango Mama's page, I thought it her "pre-birth bonding" was "nice" but a little kooky. Verny's book made it clear to me it was important.) He has written a follow-up book called NURTURING THE UNBORN CHILD and I definitely plan on reading it when I am pregnant with my second.

So this study makes sense to me. Though I agree not EVERY cord-around-the-neck baby will kill themselves. Come on.

Anyway, I LOVEd the basic message of the book (the mother's thoughts/feelings/experiences do have an effect on the baby) but most of the stories were very horrible to read. I DO NOT recommend that a pregnant woman read it. I read it when my baby was 3 months old.

SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU ARE PG AND SENSITVE TO NEGATIVE STUFF
The following are some horrible examples that he cited (again, my memory is fuzzy, you'll have to read the book, but PLEASE not if you are pregnant right now):
- one patient who felt suicidal most of his/her life... was a product of an attempted abortion by the mother.
- one patient had disturbing dreams of being in an elevator??? His mother was abused by her husband (i think) and he raped her during pregnancy (hence, the very violent up and down motion.)
- C-section babies - adults in hypnosis remembered something, but I can't remember the specifics.

So I totally believe that a peaceful pregnancy & birth experience is important, not only to the mother, but the baby as well. Chilton Pierce writes about this stuff, no?

Side note... this topic really interests me. I think my son was completely traumatized by his separation from me in the maternity ward. He spent most of his time howling in the bassinet. He cried so hard for 2 days. He stopped when he was picked up. I was in a peaceful mom daze... there were so many interruptions in my damn hospital room. I felt so guilty for months over how he suffered.

THEN... I read that crying kills brain cells.
Charge for the Future of Kangaroo Care: A public health imperative
Dr. Nils Bergman is a Kangaroo Care medical doctor, advocate and researcher. I heard him speak at the LLLI Conference in 2001 in Chicago.

5th paragraph down - he's talking about how the preemie needs to be in the "correct habitat" i.e. on his mother's body (not a damn incubator)
"Such removal does elicit the "protest-depair response", with ten-fold increases in glucocorticoid levels, such levels are neurotoxic (Modi and Glover 1998).

Then, 2 days later, we had him circumcized. You can imagine my guilt. It's the biggest regret of my life. I don't stay up worried about how those events shaped his brain (for the worse) because that would be pointless. I just do my best at Mothering. But I am so passionate about gentle birth (and pregnancy) now and more aware of it's importance.

PS - My mother is dead. I WISH I could ask her about my birth and my sister's birth. I was born in a NYC hospital in 1969. I'm guessing she was knocked out/drugged up. But I have never even smoked pot. I hate beer, all types of alcohol. I have always avoided drugs/getting high, because it's self-destructive. I'm not self-destructive. Another theory for that may be that in my first year, I was held A LOT by a family member (babywearing) and comforted... everything has an effect. Or... perhaps because my mother (a widow) was not a good parent (I was her parent) I knew at an early age I had to be self-reliant/self-protective.

Point is..... I don't think every kid who had an epidural during birth is going to grow up to be a drunk/drug abuser. (Though a lot of kids are going that route, aren't they?) Interesting theory, but I'd rather see a long-term study.

[applejuice]

The study was a long term one (1970-1988) and was done in a population (Sweden) where there was little child abuse and much social support for the family.

Just thought it was interesting.

[Chelly2003]

I can see how birth would have an effect on a persons life.

I was born with forcepts, and was in an incubator for two or three months, I'm sure I never got near my mother very often in those months, to this day I'm not a touchy feely person, I get very uncomfortable when people hug me - even relatives.

As far as taking my own life, I certainly would use a gun if that ever came up - no way I could JUMP or hang myself...... but as luck would happen - thats not come up.
(and I don't own a gun)

[starfairy]

i can see a possible correlation with drugs in labor/drug use (which I guess means my first child is highly likely to become a drug addict - I was planning an unmedicated birth but spent hours getting hourly doese of demerol). my mother had an epidural, i grew to have a penchant for cocaine/alcohol....

I was however a forceps birth & on the one occasion I contemplated suicide I was going to take pills - I could never shoot myslef or whatever - just couldnt do it. I have no intrest in mechanical things in the least in general. I do have breathing problems, but dont know that it stemmed from my birth - I have read Louis Hay's book You Can Heal your Life & she suggests that breathing problems stem from smothering parents - given that my parents were like that & my problems did not appear til junior high, i find that more likely......

My 17 yr old brother was a suction birth - if he commits suicide I wonder what would be his method of choice? My son had the cord around his neck when he was born - if he ever commits suicide I can just see thinking back to this "see! I should have known this would be how he would do it! I never should have bought him that rope! And I was so careful never to buy him belts!"

I do have neck problems & it has been suggested that it is from my birth - I do think birth affects us mentally & physically - but i think there are just some things we dont need to worry about!