HMN 2025: How Childhood trauma may lead to more difficult births

Women who have been exposed to multiple traumatic experiences during childhood have more difficult births than others. They are much more likely to need emergency cesarean sections, suffer major hemorrhages or pre-eclampsia, and need more antibiotics. These findings come from a new study involving 1,253 women, who were monitored from before giving birth to one year afterwards.

“Health care providers need to have the courage to ask women about their experiences as children in order to be able to give traumatized women more attention during pregnancy so as to prevent or mitigate negative consequences after childbirth,” says Per Kristiansson, a specialist in general medicine and adjunct professor at Uppsala University in Sweden who led the study published in PLOS One.

It is well documented that the conditions and patterns affecting a person or their environment during childhood also influence their adult life. There is extensive research on how experiences of and exposure to mental ill health, poverty, cognitive challenges and the like stay with a person. However, until now, little has been known about the impact of childhood trauma on childbirth.

Over 1,200 women surveyed

In a new study, researchers have investigated whether traumatic events have any impact on the course of labor and delivery. The study is based on responses from 1,253 women who were asked to complete three questionnaires during early pregnancy, with follow-up one year after the birth. The forms contained questions about childhood trauma, mode of delivery and obstetric complications. The types of trauma included physical and emotional trauma, physical and emotional neglect, and family dysfunction.

The women were then grouped according to the number of reported traumatic experiences, in the categories 0 traumas, 1–3 traumas and 4 traumas or more. 42% of the women reported 0 childhood traumas, while 46% reported 1–3 and 12% reported 4 or more childhood traumas.

Four times more women developed pre-eclampsia

The women with 4 or more traumas generally had the most complications. Compared with the group that had reported 0 childhood traumas, there were four times as many cases of pre-eclampsia. Twice as many were delivered by cesarean section. The incidence of excessive bleeding during childbirth (more than 1000 ml) was more than three times as high. As regards antibiotic treatment, there were three times as many cases as in the comparison group.

“It was surprising that early life events could influence somatic outcomes in childbirth and that this applies to both outcomes relating to the woman’s own body and outcomes involving outsiders,” says Kristiansson.

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