How two New Zealand midwives are using neuroscience to heal birth trauma
Healing from trauma, fear and anxiety during pregnancy and beyond. Meet the midwives pioneering a neuroscience-based method right here in New Zealand.
Dr Christine Mellor and Dee Dawson each have over 30 years’ experience as registered midwives and are passionate about their roles, supporting women and babies.
They were keen to extend what they could offer those in their care, and their search for an effective approach led them to train in a transformative form of healing, known as Havening Techniques®.
Through their practice, Willow, the two compassionate professionals have since helped many women during the perinatal period build emotional resilience and resolve past traumatic experiences that were not only hindering their ability to enjoy their pregnancies but also to bond with their babies.
The feedback they’ve received from mums and mums-to-be has been heartwarming, with clients reporting the gentle, soothing technique has helped them feel more relaxed through pregnancy, childbirth and beyond.
Q: What is havening?
A: Dee
Havening is a neuroscience-based psychosensory therapy that helps people overcome trauma-related anxiety. We achieve this by stimulating neurochemical pathways to help the brain re-wire so it responds differently to memories, de-traumatising them.
It was developed by American neurologist Dr Ronald Ruden and combines intuitive, gentle, soothing touch with cognitive interventions that we guide our clients through. The technique enables the brain to reprocess distressing past experiences, including trauma, fear and grief.
People don't need to tell us what their trauma was, as long as they can access it in their own brain, or the associated emotions. We’ve worked successfully with people who have a fear of childbirth, and those who’ve experienced birth trauma, but it’s also highly effective for people who’ve experienced other traumatic experiences, distressing situations like childhood emotional trauma, abandonment, or sexual abuse resulting in PTSD.
Q: What’s the science behind it?
A: Dee
Normal memories are stored in the hippocampus, but traumatic ones are kept in the amygdala and when we’re traumatised a whole new neural pathway is created.
Ruden discovered that when you stimulate certain parts of the skin through Havening, the gentle touch sends signals to the brain, creating calming delta waves, which counteract stress hormones like cortisol. It also promotes the release of neurochemicals like the love hormone oxytocin.
Havening focuses on touching the areas of the body which stimulate these delta waves – the palms of our hands, tops of our arms, and the face. The touch causes calcium to flood the neurons in the brain, which resolves the neural pathway that was created when that trauma happened.
At the same time, we use distraction through simple mental tasks to interrupt the continuous activation of the amygdala, preventing distressing thoughts from persistently resurfacing. It delinks the neural pathway from a fight or flight response.
Once Havening’s weakened the traumatic memory, individuals can recall past experiences without the same emotions of stress, fear,
or anxiety.
Q: How can it help women during the perinatal period?
A: Christine
We understand the ripple effects that unresolved trauma, fear, and anxiety can have for women’s experience of pregnancy, labour and birth, and have been blown away by the incredible healing Havening supports.
The perinatal period – from pregnancy and up to one year postpartum – is a time of significant psychological, social, and emotional transformation. Many women experience heightened vulnerability to stress, anxiety, and trauma-related responses across the childbirth year. During pregnancy and postpartum, hormonal shifts increase amygdala sensitivity, contributing to heightened emotional reactivity and susceptibility to stress.
Havening’s ability to modulate the amygdala’s function and reduce distressing emotional memories can improve maternal wellbeing. This creates a greater capacity to bond with their baby because it has the potential to alleviate symptoms of perinatal anxiety, depression, PTSD, and phobias.
Havening’s capacity to enhance oxytocin release also supports maternal-infant bonding, for a more positive postpartum experience for
the mother and baby.
Q: Can it help in childbirth too?
A: Christine
Yes, we’ve been able to help many women who’ve experienced birth as traumatic, or who have fears surrounding childbirth, but also those who’ve experienced other life events that have impacted their experience of labour and birth.
Havening can help them process and resolve this, reduce symptoms of fear and distress, and help enhance maternal wellbeing.
We work with women, and sometimes their partners. Some are having their first baby and have unresolved trauma, or have fear around their upcoming birth. Others have struggled with infertility or experienced pregnancy loss. We also work with women who have had a previous challenging pregnancy, birth, or postpartum experience and are being triggered by this.
Q: What’s involved?
A: Dee
Our Havening sessions are usually 60 to 90 minutes long, with the Havening touch lasting between 20 to 40 minutes.
We take time to build a connection to help clients feel safe and calm and ask them to briefly access the distressing memory, then utilise touch in a specific way, while at the same time distracting the brain.
We’ll also gather relevant medical and historical information as there may be other significant life experiences or events where she’d felt vulnerable or threatened – for example, childhood admissions to hospital are often relevant.
Q: What can I expect?
A: Christine
We sit alongside clients and either we apply the Havening touch, or the woman can apply it herself as we guide her. As we do this, the woman can close her eyes and we ask her to recall the part of the memory that represents the peak of her distress – what she saw, heard, smelt and felt. As the Havening touch begins, we start the distractions, which can be visual, cognitive or auditory. They are light-hearted and playful. The client briefly revisits the memory every five minutes, and Havening Techniques continue in response to the level of distress, until this has significantly reduced or is no longer felt.
Q: Can you treat remotely?
A: Dee
Yes, if someone’s not able to make it to one of our clinics in Auckland we can book a remote session and during that guide them around where to place their own hands as we talk them through the distraction techniques.
Q: What’s the result?
A: Dee
Afterwards, people often describe an emotional disconnection from the memory, and feeling ‘light’, relaxed, and peaceful.
The therapeutic effects are often immediate. Many people need only one or two sessions, although more may be required when there is complex trauma.
It is a privilege to use this incredible therapy to work with women at this pivotal time of their lives. We have found the Havening Technique and our extensive midwifery experience and insight synthesise beautifully together when supporting women as they become parents.
Dr Christine Mellor, DHSc, MHSc, RM, RGN, and Dee Dawson, GradDip Psychotherapy, BHSc, RM, each have over 30 years’ experience as registered midwives.
AS FEATURED IN ISSUE 70 OF OHbaby! MAGAZINE. CHECK OUT OTHER ARTICLES IN THIS ISSUE BELOW
