What Happened the Day You Were Born?

#13 in the series: What I Wish I had Known Before Beginning Therapy

Photo by Jimmy Conover on Unsplash

I was born on June 16, 1953. It was a Tuesday and Tuesday’s child really did grow up to be full of grace—most days. That Tuesday was a rather unremarkable day for historical events except for an uprising in East Berlin. It is estimated that I was one of 268,114 babies who entered the world that day.

I do not recognize any of the famous names of those born that day. The #1 song was No Other Love by Perry Como. I doubt my parents listened, nor would they have gone to the most popular movie, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, starring Marilyn Monroe. I was born into a pastor’s family in a conservative church denomination.

That introduction pretty much dates me and sets the context for the following: What happened to you the day you were born is far more important than the historical facts surrounding the day.

ChatGPT4 was up to the challenge of describing the childbirth practices on the day I was born. I asked, “What were common childbirth practices in 1953?”

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Childbirth practices in 1953 were notably different from today's standards. Here are some common practices from that time: I asked: I have italicized what is most pertinent to my particular story—including [one additional item of information].

1. Hospital Births: By the 1950s, the majority of births in the United States and other developed countries took place in hospitals, rather than at home.

2. Twilight Sleep: This was a common method for pain management during labor. It involved administering a combination of morphine and scopolamine to women in labor, which often left them with little or no memory of the birth process. However, it could also lead to complications and less involvement in the birth experience.

3. General Anesthesia: Many women were given general anesthesia during childbirth, particularly for cesarean sections. This meant they were unconscious during the birth.

4. Episiotomies: This surgical cut made at the opening of the vagina during childbirth was routinely performed to prevent tearing and to expedite delivery.

5. Limited Father Involvement: Fathers were typically not present in the delivery room. Instead, they waited in separate areas and were informed of the birth after it occurred. [My father was conducting a funeral for an infant.]

6. Supine Position: Women were commonly positioned lying on their backs with their legs in stirrups during delivery. This was believed to give doctors better access, though it's not the most natural or effective position for childbirth.

7. Routine Use of Forceps: Forceps, a surgical instrument resembling a pair of tongs, were frequently used to assist with difficult deliveries.

8. Postpartum Care: New mothers often stayed in the hospital for up to a week after giving birth, receiving extended rest and care.

9. Infant Care: Babies were often kept in nurseries, separate from their mothers, and brought to them for feeding at scheduled times.

These practices reflected the medical model of childbirth prevalent at the time, which emphasized control, intervention, and the authority of medical professionals over the birthing process.

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It is worth the effort to find out what happened during your birth! It matters for many reasons, specifically as it pertains to attachment. Thankfully the practices described above have been replaced by more attachment-focused procedures but entire generations have been impacted—more on that later.

Without meaning to, my mother provided a clear picture of why we did not attach during my first days of life. At the time she shared about the week of my birth, I was too unaware of the impact of early attachment to recognize the importance of her revelations: (The brother she mentioned was five years old when I was born.)

“I was overwhelmed with your brother’s behavior and all of the expectations of being a pastor’s wife. When you were born women were unconscious during delivery and stayed in the hospital for five days. I told the nurses to keep you in the nursery. It was the vacation I needed from all the responsibilities. I was exhausted.”

My mother told me this as an aside when my hospital stays after delivery were so short and my babies remained in the room with me. Neither my mother nor I had any access to the current research surrounding attachment (though my college degree in Child Development did provide some insights).

Now I understand that the problem was not only that we missed the crucial attachment window; my mother was too overwhelmed to care for another child. She was exhausted and needed rest. Simply being in the physical presence of an exhausted mother is not beneficial to building a secure attachment. My mother returned home and was left alone with a ten-year-old boy, an infant, and a very rambunctious preschool boy. It did not go well. 

Inadequate attachment is a rupture that requires repair—another concept that was not understood. Secure attachment can be achieved if mothers understand the ruptures that may be caused by extenuating circumstances such as medical problems. Attachment-based therapy approaches can provide help in healing the rupture and providing a path to earned secure attachment.

I will be sharing more about these types of therapies in the future but a great place to begin researching is this page on the ATN website: Finding Hope & Help for Healing: Trauma-Sensitive Attachment-Focused Therapies

What I wish I had understood before beginning therapy is that many of my struggles were due to an insecure attachment that began the day I was born. Without secure attachment, the impact of the trauma I experienced was so much worse.

Attachment relationships are the buffer that keeps difficult experiences from becoming trauma. As a child, there was nothing I could do to solve this problem. That is no longer true as an adult, but healing early wiring is difficult. Understanding that the ways insecure attachment impacted me were not my fault helped me heal.