Labor is traumatic. Can you even begin to imagine? Your body is cracked open like a nut. If you survive it, in time, your body will heal. But there’s no time for that. Just as you’re being sewn up, or your placenta is gently extracted, or you awaken from anesthesia, you’re expected to breastfeed and form a deep and immediate bond with your baby. The only question anyone will likely ask you about your birth experience is how many hours it took. In that way, you seemingly quantify the pain you endured. But this number fails to do justice to what you may have suffered in the delivery room. Being in labor is an experience perhaps so traumatic, and transformative, that you are forever affected. Or you simply forget it – you lock it away because that is expected of you too. But isn’t it time, like anxiety and postpartum depression, we begin to recognize birth trauma and its varied manifestations?