Taking Back Birth
A Workshop For Empowerment and Healing
What does it mean to have a traumatic birth?
Whether the turbulence of your birth was acknowledged or not,
trauma arises out of experiences in
which we feel unsafe,
in which we feel we’ve lost control or power.
If any part of your birth experience
has affected you negatively,
your body and your heart deserve to heal.
Join perinatal therapist Megan Lobsinger, LPCC, for a workshop in which we will reclaim our transition into motherhood by healing our stories. We’ll support one another in meaning-making, focusing on our strengths and resilience, and moving toward a more peaceful relationship with our birth experiences.
The workshop will include:
Education around the science of trauma and its impact on our bodies
Exercises to help us tell meaningful stories about our births that promote empowerment and healing
Mindfulness strategies to help manage the physiological triggers of trauma
Awareness of the impacts of birth trauma, including struggles with feeding and bonding, alongside grief and postpartum mood disorders, and strategies to manage these challenges
Support, understanding, and connection among those who really get it.
Upcoming Options:
Saturday, 11/16,
10am-12:30pm
Monday, 12/16,
12:30-3pm
(CHOOSE ONE)
5011 Kenwood Rd
Cincinnati, OH (Madisonville)
(Please leave baby with another caregiver).
$50-$100 / 2.5 hour workshop*
*As we pilot this in 2024, we invite you to choose your payment level. Our primary goal is to offer healing support to as many alumni as possible.
We will work towards a sliding scale service fee for this
therapist-lead workshop in 2025. The cost next year will likely land at $40/hr ($100 per workshop).
A note from
Cincy Postpartum Founder,
Amanda Laskowski
If you had asked me in the early postpartum months what I thought of my fresh (and first) birth experience, I would have told you I felt POWERFUL.
I was overjoyed to have my beautiful baby home, and filled to the brim with adrenaline and joy (amidst the expected out-of-nowhere baby blues tears). I was immensely proud of what my body accomplished! Sure, we had difficulties, but nothing outweighed the gratitude I felt for my baby, my providers, my partner, and my body.
… and then I began to hear other’s stories.
Oh, your baby latched right away? Wow, that would have transformed our feeding journey. But we were separated with a NICU stay.
… I realized how deeply I deferred negativity, from myself and others.
I am so glad my baby is healthy now, AND will I ever recover from the pain I feel about missing Golden Hour and being absent for the first hours of her life?
… I realized how little I knew about what had happened to my body.
“Should I google “third-degree tear?”, I asked my best friend, who offered to research it a bit for me. Dozens of trips walking across the hospital to visit the NICU just hours after stitches did excessive damage to my healing. The dismissive response from my OB when I requested a referral for pelvic floor PT added to the pain.
As the months beyond birth passed on, I felt dismissed by my provider, my loved ones, and even by myself, brokenly muttering,
“all that matters
is a healthy baby.”
But I mattered, too.
You matter, too.
I am thrilled to partner with Megan to offer this support to our alumni. I witness every day the power of community in processing our journeys, and have found immense healing working through what I now define as a traumatic birth. If any part of you feels drawn to this workshop, I hope you will join in. <3
What are participants saying?
Participant M.F
This was such a great experience, even nearly 2 years postpartum.
The further away you get, the more "crazy" people can make you feel about still struggling with birth trauma. I genuinely felt like I experienced birth in a way no one else had and it was very lonely. Finally seeing the same kind of hurt, confusion, and grief that I've felt reflected in someone else's story was so comforting and validating.
Megan was a really great resource in this discussion. She held our stories and feelings about them with such respect, without trying to find a greater purpose or meaning to them, and gave us reassurance that the ways our trauma shows up are all ok and expected.
I feel like I have a better idea of where to start with truly unpacking all of my feelings and processing them after this, while recognizing that this is something that's carried in my body more than my brain.
Megan's guidance to reflect on the slivers of power and positive moments of our stories was also really appreciated. So much of my focus had been on the negatives that I kind of forgot about those points.
Participant M.T.
Megan was absolutely fantastic facilitating the Taking Back Birth workshop. I felt so understood and heard by her, and felt extremely comfortable in her presence.
She has an inherent calming quality, and her breathwork and guided mindfulness practice throughout our workshop was helpful in keeping me grounded and focused.
Sharing a space with women who can first-handedly understand my traumatic birth experience was so helpful to me.
It can be hard when society wants women to look back on such a transformative experience with nothing but graciousness and positivity.
Cincy Postpartum is doing groundbreaking work in this space, allowing women with varying experiences to feel represented and welcomed to heal, grieve, rejoice, and just be in the journey of new motherhood.
