Some journeys into motherhood begin not with celebration but with crisis.
A significant number of women experience high-risk pregnancies that culminate in early delivery, emergency hospitalization, and a sudden initiation into the world of neonatal intensive care. What follows is a deeply complex psychological and emotional landscape that our cultural narratives about birth rarely prepare us for.
At Mom Over Matter MA, we meet women in the midst of these contradictions—with care, clinical insight, and compassion rooted in lived maternal realities.
When Birth is a Battlefield
Traumatic births often come without warning. Preeclampsia, placental insufficiency, fetal growth restriction, or sudden hemorrhage may reroute a birth plan in an instant. The birthing person is no longer an empowered agent of life-giving, but a patient in crisis. The body becomes a site of medical intervention, and control is replaced with urgency.
The experience is not just physical. Many mothers emerge from these events with symptoms of acute stress or birth-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). These include:
- Flashbacks or nightmares of the delivery
- Dissociation or emotional numbness
- Panic attacks or intrusive thoughts about the baby’s safety
- A persistent feeling that “something is wrong” with them
These symptoms often go unrecognized in a medical system focused on the infant’s health, even when the mother is silently unraveling.
The NICU: Love in a Clinical Landscape
The NICU, for all its lifesaving brilliance, can be emotionally brutal.
Parents are asked to love through plexiglass. To feel joy at each gram of weight gained, while managing guilt for not having carried to term. To learn the language of oxygen saturation, CPAP settings, bilirubin levels—while sleep-deprived and raw.
They grieve the loss of what birth was supposed to be, while simultaneously trying to attach, breastfeed, pump, recover physically, and show up with strength for their baby.
But grief and gratitude are not mutually exclusive. You can be thankful for a NICU team and still mourn the fact that you needed one.
Why This Journey Requires Specialized Support
At Mom Over Matter MA, we specialize in helping mothers:
- Process medical trauma from high-risk pregnancies and unexpected deliveries
- Manage NICU-related anxiety, grief, and identity loss
- Reconnect with their own body after dissociative or traumatic experiences
- Navigate the transition home from the NICU, which often brings delayed emotional responses
Unlike general therapy, our work is perinatal-specific, trauma-informed, and mother-centered. We understand that a traumatic birth isn’t just a “bad day.” It can fracture a woman’s sense of self, her ability to trust her body, and her orientation to motherhood.
You Are Still Becoming a Mother
Even if your baby sleeps in a NICU isolette.
Even if your birth was clinical instead of “empowered.”
Even if you haven’t felt joy yet.
You are still becoming a mother.
And you deserve care.
How We Help
Individual Therapy: Process trauma, develop regulation tools, reclaim your narrative
Somatic Support: Reconnect to your body with gentle, trauma-informed guidance
Virtual & In-Person Sessions: Based in Massachusetts, serving clients statewide and beyond
Reach Out
If you’re struggling to process your birth, feeling numb or overwhelmed during your baby’s NICU stay, or noticing anxiety and intrusive thoughts creeping in—we’re here.
Schedule a confidential consult
Or reach out with questions—we always answer.
You don’t have to be “fine.” You just have to start.
