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by May Ivette Ray (Author)
The Hidden Crisis in Maternity Care: Up to 45% of Birthing People Experience Trauma. Are You Prepared to Respond?
Standard midwifery and nursing education often neglects the profound impact of trauma. This leaves dedicated practitioners feeling overwhelmed when facing triggered responses, flashbacks, or dissociation in the clinical setting. You entered this profession to provide compassionate care, but without the right tools, you risk inadvertently causing re-traumatization and experiencing moral injury.
Trauma-Informed Midwifery Care: The Essential Handbook for Practice, Protocols, and Provider Resilience is the definitive resource for midwives (CNM, CM, CPM), labor and delivery nurses, students, and birth workers seeking practical, evidence-based strategies. This handbook moves beyond academic theory to offer actionable clinical skills and protocols for every stage of the perinatal period.
Inside this comprehensive guide, you will discover:
The Neurobiology of Trauma: Understand exactly how the brain and nervous system store trauma (including Polyvagal theory), and learn to recognize fight, flight, freeze, and fawn responses during labor.
Actionable Protocols: Implement specific guidelines for trauma assessment tools (including ACEs and PCL-5 adaptations), trauma-informed consent protocols, and respectful intimate examinations that prioritize body autonomy.
Clinical Skills for Safety: Master essential strategies for creating safety in clinical encounters, managing triggers and flashbacks during labor, and actively engaging in birth trauma prevention.
Specific Populations: Dedicated guidance for caring for sexual abuse survivors, IPV safety planning, and navigating systemic and racial trauma through cultural humility.
Postpartum PTSD Support: Learn techniques for trauma-informed perineal repair, postpartum PTSD assessment, and supportive infant feeding strategies.
Provider Resilience: Protect your own well-being with practical approaches to managing vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and burnout in midwifery.
Documentation Guidelines: Learn strengths-based documentation practices and how to communicate trauma history sensitively.
This handbook provides the frameworks, scripts, and clinical wisdom necessary to shift the paradigm of maternity care from causing harm to promoting healing.
Transform your practice. Equip yourself with the essential knowledge to provide truly safe, supportive care.
