Such a knowing quote from the wonderful Ina May Gaskin. A midwife with over 40 years experience, Ina May is often known as the expert in love and birth.

So often we hear scary, negative stories about birth. For women affected by bad birth experiences, sharing traumatic stories is a helpful way to process and deal with the after effects. However, it also perpetuates the perception of fear that first-time expectant mothers have about birth and labour.

On the other hand we don't often hear positive, wonderful stories about birth – and there many out there. So a lot of women approach the birth experience with a great amount of fear because they've only heard about the bad parts. We need to hear more positive birth stories to help change the paradigm of birth being a scary, traumatic experience that must be "endured".

We like to encourage women that have had traumatic births to have some birth debriefing so they can process the experience, so it doesn't affect their bonding with their child and their intimate relationships.