Two Sessions After a Traumatic Birth: A Major New Trial

Birth can be frightening. An emergency caesarean, a haemorrhage, a baby taken straight to neonatal care, or simply feeling unheard and out of control during labour can leave a lasting mark. Some women go on to experience intrusive memories, nightmares, avoidance of anything connected to the birth, and difficulty bonding with their baby. This is distinct from fear of childbirth before the event. It is a response to what actually happened. How common is it? A trial published in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology in 2025 gives a striking indication. Researchers screened nearly 11,000 women in Amsterdam, and 861 of them reported having experienced their birth as traumatic. From that group, Yvette Hendrix and colleagues randomly assigned 151 women either to receive EMDR or to continue with usual care, which consisted of two supportive telephone calls. The EMDR was deliberately brief: two sessions of 60 minutes, delivered between two and five weeks after the birth. Outcomes were measured at nine weeks postpartum. The results were clear. Probable PTSD in the EMDR group fell from 39% to 11%. In the usual care group it fell from 45% to 29%. Symptom scores dropped significantly further in the EMDR group on both the self-report measure and a structured clinical interview. The benefits were not confined to trauma symptoms. Women who received EMDR also showed improvements in depressive symptoms, in mother and infant bonding, in fear of childbirth, and in psychological quality of life. No serious adverse events occurred, and breastfeeding rates were unaffected. One result was less clear cut. Rates of formal PTSD diagnosis on the clinical interview did not differ significantly between groups, though the numbers involved were small. Two things make this trial notable. The first is the dose. Two hours of therapy, in total, produced a measurable difference months later. The second is the timing. Delivered within weeks of the event, this was early intervention, and it worked. That is worth noting because the value of early trauma treatment is genuinely contested in other settings. For anyone who gave birth recently and has been told that what they are feeling is normal and will pass, this research offers something more useful. Distress after a difficult birth often does fade. But it does not have to be waited out, and a short, safe course of treatment is available. Source: Hendrix, Y. M. G. A., van Pampus, M. G., Hofman, A., Henrichs, J., van der Horst, H. E., & de Jongh, A. (2025). Treatment of traumatic birth experience with postpartum early eye movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy: A randomized clinical trial. American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.