'Nobody wants to acknowledge you can get PTSD after birth': Birth trauma is more common than you may think

Delivering a baby is one of the most natural things a woman can do. Yet the process can often damage her body. We talk to the experts about the implications 

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She was a woman with a thriving business, pregnant with her second child and – on the third visit to her midwife – she started sobbing and crying.

“She’d been experiencing urinary and faecal leaking since the birth of her first child two years earlier. It was affecting all aspects of her life. She cried and cried – she was miserable,” recalls Deirdre Daly, assistant professor in midwifery at TCD School of Nursing and Midwifery.