Sexual Abuse and Pregnancy

Survivor Moms includes excerpts from 81 women's stories of birthing, mothering and healing after childhood sexual abuse. It is intended to break down the isolation pregnant women and their caregivers often feel-as though they were the only ones having to cope with these challenges.

The book is written for lay women and for professionals. It includes some women's complete narratives, many excerpts, discussion of implications of women's experiences for their care, suggestions for working together during maternity care and beyond, resources to consult, and information from research that is currently available.

The authors are Mickey Sperlich, CPM, MA, and Julia Seng, CNM, PhD. The book is now available from Motherbaby Press, a division of Midwifery Today.

Who Is a "Survivor Mom"?

We consider a "survivor mom" to be any woman who senses that experiences she has survived are factors to be reckoned with as she goes through pregnancy and becoming a mother. In this new book, we focused on what sexual abuse survivors had to say, because childhood abuse and sexual trauma are two experiences that occur around the globe and affect about one in three childbearing women. This statistic is derived from two large-scale national studies that show the incidence of childhood sexual abuse to be 27%, with a further 17.6% of women reporting adult rape (attempted or completed), half of whom were also survivors of childhood sexual abuse.(4) These specific traumatic experiences seem to spark posttraumatic stress reactions during pregnancy, prenatal care, labor, breastfeeding and adapting to motherhood. Other traumatic experiences may affect survivors during pregnancy as well, and what midwives learn from the women's narratives in this book may help them adapt their responses to survivors of other traumatic experiences who are affected while in a midwife's care. Among the women who contributed their stories, some felt the past trauma played a horrible part in their childbearing, while others counted their passage into motherhood as a time of triumphing over the effects of past violence and abuse. Being a "survivor mom" does not seem easy in any of their stories, but many of the women prized their awareness that their children could grow up mindfully protected by a mother who was actively recovering from any long-term negative effects of her own abuse.

Listening to Survivor Moms first appeared in Midwifery Today 85, Spring 2008.