Ripped from Cunt to Spine and Called Divine

Inside the trauma, silence, and surgical brutality of being born a birthing body.

Vaginal tearing. From first degree to fourth, where you split like a hot dog bun all the way from your vagina to your arsehole. Uterine rupture. Postpartum haemorrhage. Your organs falling out. Your pelvic floor giving up entirely. Retained placenta. Broken tailbones. Torn cervixes. Stitches that tear open again. Infections. Sepsis. Anal incontinence. Milk duct abscesses the size of golf balls. Emergency blood transfusions. Stroke. Pubic bone separation. Nerve damage. Vaginal reconstructive surgery before you’ve even unpacked the baby grows.

And if you think a C-section is the “easy way out,” let me walk you through it. They slice through seven layers of your body like a human lasagne. Then they lift your organs out and place them on a table next to you. Rearrange your insides like furniture. Pull a whole person out of your abdomen. And then (if you’re lucky) someone remembers to stitch you back together properly. If not? Internal decay. Open wounds. Flesh that rots while you’re being congratulated for becoming a mum.

Childbirth is not magical. It’s not ethereal. It’s not a sun-drenched stock photo of a woman in a linen robe holding her belly under fairy lights. It’s violent. Medicalised. Bloody. Often traumatising. I know someone who was literally ripped from cunt to arse. Three years it took her to feel remotely like herself again. I know three women who nearly bled to death. One who didn’t survive. One whose C-section wound got infected because the hospital rushed her out before she could even stand up straight. One who ended up with dying tissue inside her because her stitches weren’t done right, but was still told to “walk a bit every day and keep hydrated.”

Most of the women I know weren’t prepared. Not because they’re naive, but because no one told them the truth. Because to tell the truth about childbirth would be to admit how horrific it often is. And we don’t like women talking about their pain unless it comes with a moral lesson. So instead they were handed pastel leaflets and empty affirmations. Breathe through it. Stay positive. Trust your body. Then their bodies tore, haemorrhaged, collapsed—and they were told to smile for the baby photo.

I’ve seen women spiral into full-body panic at the thought of going through it again. Women who were so emotionally and physically devastated, they didn’t recognise themselves for months. Some had to relearn how to pee without crying. Some felt like failures because the experience didn’t feel “empowering.” Some said it was the worst thing that ever happened to them. Not because of the baby, but because of what was done to them. What wasn’t explained. What wasn’t cared for.

Even the men (those who watched it happen) carry the shellshock. I’ve seen partners go grey watching the woman they love bleed out while a midwife keeps the small talk going. One man I know said he thought he was about to become a single dad before the baby had even been cleaned off. And still, we have the audacity to shame women for having pain relief. For being afraid. For not pretending it was beautiful.

I’ve heard women told they didn’t “really” give birth because they had a C-section. That they weren’t strong for having an epidural. That they took shortcuts. Imagine being torn apart or sliced open while conscious and then being told you didn’t earn it properly. I watched a C-section. It looked like a live-action dissection. Her body trembled. Her face was grey. The aftercare was relentless. If that’s a shortcut, I’d love to know what the scenic route looks like.

Yes, some people love birth. Some find it transformative. That truth deserves space. But so does this one. The majority of women I know (real women, not reiki crystal influencer types) said childbirth was the worst experience of their entire lives. And they were told to be grateful. Told to stay quiet. Told to focus on the baby.

That’s not care. That’s not empowerment. That’s pain, ignored and aestheticised. That’s trauma dressed up in flower crowns.

Childbirth Tools Designed by Men Who'd Faint at a Period Cramp

Modern childbirth was never built for the person giving birth. It was built for the men watching. Not just watching, but cutting, restraining, whispering things like “for her own good” while inventing new ways to control a process they weren’t even biologically equipped to experience. Birth, historically, wasn’t something to support. It was something to manage, dominate, and profit from. And nowhere is that clearer than in the grotesque parade of tools, techniques, and decisions that turned childbirth from a community act of care into a clinical war zone.

Let’s start with the bit most people don’t believe when they first hear it: the chainsaw was originally invented for childbirth. Yes. The same screaming, splintering machine now used to cut down trees and murder people in horror films began its life as a surgical tool used to saw through pelvic bone when a baby was “stuck.” This was before modern anaesthesia. Before antiseptic. The woman was awake, restrained, and fully conscious while a man with a hand crank sliced her open. It wasn’t rare. It was protocol. Women were cut apart to preserve the baby—and often, they died. But another issue this brought was that if it came down to choosing between saving the baby or the mother, it wasn’t the mother’s decision. It was her husband’s.

That’s right. For centuries, a man had the legal and moral right to decide whether his wife lived or died in childbirth. If saving the baby meant letting her bleed out, that was his choice to make. The woman? She was just the vessel. The cradle. The casualty.

It gets worse. Birth wasn’t always done lying on your back. That came later, when men decided they wanted a better view. Louis XIV of France liked watching his mistresses give birth. Not enough to help, of course, just enough to develop a voyeuristic preference for the “supine” position. And because he was king, that preference became practice. Upright birthing, which uses gravity and gives the person control, was replaced with flat-on-the-back exposure—despite it being the worst position biomechanically for pushing. Doctors adopted it not because it was safer, but because it was more convenient for them. It gave them a front-row seat. Sadism, meet science.

And of course, we must talk about the tools. Every single one designed for their access, not your comfort.

A Brief But Bloody Timeline of Obstetric “Innovation”
(Or: how to control a woman giving birth in twelve terrifying steps)

• The Chainsaw: Invented to saw through bone during obstructed labour. No anaesthetic. No antiseptic. Invented by men. Used on women.

• Forceps: Giant metal tongs used to yank babies from the womb. Invented by the Chamberlen family, who kept them secret for decades to sell them at a premium. Women were blindfolded and lied to.

• Twilight Sleep: A morphine-scopolamine combo used in the early 1900s. It didn’t block pain; it made women forget it. They thrashed, screamed, and had to be tied down. But hey, no memory means no trauma... right?

• The Birthing Bed: Flat. Immobile. Designed for visual and surgical access. Biomechanically useless for the person giving birth, but perfect for the man at the foot of the bed.

• Stirrups: Immobilisation disguised as support. Nothing like giving birth while strapped in like you’re having your brakes checked at Kwik Fit.

• Hospital Gowns: Open-backed humiliation cloaked in “hygiene”. Because nothing says empowerment like your entire arse on display.

• Routine Episiotomies: A “preventative” cut through the perineum, often done without consent. Many now considered unnecessary. But easier for stitching. Easier for doctors.

• Enemas and Pubic Shaving: Standard hospital prep well into the 20th century. Not because it helped with birth—but because doctors found it “tidier”.

• Manual Placenta Removal: Sometimes performed without warning, consent, or pain relief. Described by some women as the most painful part of childbirth.

• Uterine Massage: Post-birth abdominal pressing to help the uterus contract. Can feel like being punched in your freshly cut abdomen. Often done without asking.

• The Husband’s Authority: Historically, husbands made final decisions during complications. If a woman was unconscious or dying, his word—not hers—determined who was saved.

• Obstetric Silence: Women weren’t told what was happening. Information was withheld. Pain was dismissed. Fear was ignored. They were told to “trust the process.”

And the process? Was brutal.

The truth is, modern maternity care grew from a system where women weren’t the patients. They were the battlefield. Birth was something done to them, not with them. The doctor stood in the spotlight. The woman lay back and screamed. And if she survived, she was handed a baby and expected to feel grateful.

These tools are not relics. Many of them are still used today. The flat-back bed is still standard. Episiotomies are still too common. Twilight Sleep might be gone, but the culture of silence remains. And we still ask women to be quiet. To be polite. To remember the baby. To forget themselves.

It is not a coincidence that the most brutal parts of childbirth have always been standardised, normalised, and rebranded as necessary. When a system is built to centre the observer, the body becomes the object. And that object is allowed to suffer, so long as it doesn’t complain too loudly.

Pain Is Holy, But Only If You’re a Woman

The entire foundation of childbirth as we know it rests on a lie so old, it’s canon. Genesis 3:16 is the original blueprint for what society still expects from women: “I will greatly multiply your pain in childbirth, in pain you shall bring forth children.” That’s God’s punishment for Eve. No trial. No appeal. No nuance. Just eternal suffering served raw to every womb on Earth because a woman wanted knowledge. And from that one line, we built a global, centuries-spanning consensus that pain, when experienced by a woman, is not just necessary, but morally good.

Not pain as warning. Not pain as trauma. Pain as virtue. Pain as purification. Pain as proof that you're doing it right.

That one verse built an entire theology of punishment disguised as femininity. Christian theologians from Tertullian to Augustine wrote with open contempt about women as temptresses and sinners, destined to suffer. Tertullian called women “the devil’s gateway,” the one who “destroyed God’s image, man.” Augustine linked childbirth pain directly to Eve’s guilt and taught that female suffering preserved divine order. And it stuck.

Women who suffered during childbirth were seen as closer to God. Women who died in it? Practically sainted. Their martyrdom made holy because their death brought forth life. That is the warped exchange rate we still operate under. If a woman lives, she’s expected to smile. If she dies, she becomes a tragic heroine. Either way, her pain is only ever revered when it’s too late to be treated.

Pain relief itself was considered a theological problem well into the modern era. The idea of a woman giving birth without agony wasn’t just revolutionary; it was borderline blasphemous. When Queen Victoria famously used chloroform in 1853 for the birth of her eighth child, religious leaders publicly denounced her. Why? Because she had disrupted the "natural order." Because she dared to ease the punishment God had personally signed off on. One Scottish clergyman wrote that “to avoid the pains of childbirth is to violate the curse of Eve.” As if the entire purpose of being a woman was to suffer righteously, on her back, quietly.

And that idea (that pain is something to endure rather than interrogate) never left. It simply changed its vocabulary. We no longer cite scripture, we cite biology. “It’s what the female body was designed to do.” That’s the line now. That’s the modern gospel. As if evolutionary adaptation justifies mutilation. As if a torn perineum and a shattered tailbone are simply the cost of participation. Pain is still praised. The woman who births without medication is seen as stronger. Purer. Braver. More real. The one who cries out, who begs for an epidural, who asks for help? She is weak. Unnatural. Disconnected from her body. A traitor to the myth.

Even today, women are still told to focus on the baby when their own bodies are breaking. Still told to be grateful for surviving, as though survival is the same thing as healing. Still told that postpartum depression is normal, that trauma is just hormones, that panic is a phase. Still sent home with shattered nerves and shredded flesh and expected to bond, breastfeed, and bounce back. Because suffering is still expected. Because somewhere, deep in the collective memory of this system, Eve still owes a debt. And her daughters are still paying it, one scream at a time.

And when it fails? When the system collapses? When a woman dies in labour in a modern hospital in a high-income country? We don't blame doctrine. We don't blame patriarchy. We say it was unforeseen. We say it was a fluke. We say it was “complicated.” And we whisper it like it’s just part of the deal. Because the truth is harder to say: that pain in childbirth has never been treated as a problem to solve. Only a price to pay.

And no one asks why women are still footing the bill.

The Baby’s Healthy! But Are You?

There’s a particular kind of gaslighting that only happens after childbirth. It’s pastel pink. It smells like talc and false reassurance. And it sounds like this: “Well, at least the baby’s healthy.” As if a healthy baby automatically equals a healthy mother. As if the body that tore, bled, broke, and maybe almost died in the process should be silent now, replaced with a swaddle and a smile. Because once the baby’s here, the mother becomes scenery. Her health? Her pain? Her brain? Background noise.

You could be physically wrecked—stitched up, split open, leaking from three places—and no one would blink, as long as you can hold the baby and look vaguely maternal on Instagram. And yes, it’s often that ridiculous. A woman could be sitting on a frozen adult nappy, nursing stitches that feel like barbed wire, disassociating completely from her body, and still be asked if she’s planning to “bounce back.” You’re not allowed to be broken. You’re expected to be sexy. Strong. Spiritual. Post-trauma, but make it aesthetic.

Let’s break the illusion, shall we? These are not rare tragedies. They’re standard outcomes:

• 1 in 3 births result in birth trauma, including emergency interventions, physical injuries, and psychological trauma serious enough to cause symptoms of PTSD.

• 1 in 7 women develop postnatal depression, often unrecognised, untreated, or mistaken for hormonal “baby blues.”

• Six-week NHS postnatal check-ups (if you get one) tend to ask one question: Is the baby feeding well?

• Broken tailbones, prolapsed organs, or reopened stitches? Treated like side effects. Not medical emergencies.

• Black and brown women in the UK are 3 to 4 times more likely to die in childbirth. Not a myth. A statistic. Yet their pain continues to be ignored or downplayed.

• Disabled, neurodivergent, and trans birthing people often face compounded risks: misgendering, medical neglect, lack of access, and little to no accommodation.

• Pelvic floor dysfunction, painful sex, and incontinence? Often dismissed as “normal.” Even though it’s not.

• Emotional detachment, disassociation, and flashbacks? Chalked up to hormones instead of real trauma responses.

• “Bounce-back” culture expects women to be healed, hot, and holding a green juice within weeks. Trauma? Tuck it in with the baby blanket.

You could be actively bleeding out, and someone would still ask if you're breastfeeding. You could have a gaping abdominal wound, and the midwife will remind you to “try skin-to-skin.” You could be crying in the shower, unable to recognise your body, your brain, or your life, and someone, somewhere, will say: “Well, at least the baby’s okay.”

But what if she’s not? What if the mother is dissociating every time the baby cries? What if she’s physically incapable of walking without pain? What if she’s so consumed by guilt and shame for not loving every second of it, that she can’t ask for help without feeling like a failure? What if her “bounce back” is a breakdown?

And still, we keep pretending that maternal health begins and ends at the baby’s weight. That postpartum care is optional. That trauma should be hidden behind filtered birth announcements and hand-lettered wall decals that say “blessed.” Because apparently, a wrecked womb is fine; as long as you’ve got a waist trainer.

Birth Was Never Broken. The System Is.

Birth has never been the problem. It’s the scaffolding built around it that’s violent. We took something primal and powerful and turned it into a cold, fluorescent nightmare. We replaced wisdom with efficiency, midwives with machines, and instinct with policy. Then, when women emerged stitched, sobbing, or traumatised, we called it a miracle and handed them a muslin wrap.

The system is understaffed, burned out, and obsessed with output. You get fifteen minutes to explain your trauma, if that. Consent is optional. Aftercare is a leaflet. Postpartum therapy is a luxury. And if you dare to say any of this out loud, someone will ask why you’re being negative about such a “beautiful experience.” As if honesty ruins the baby.

Birth doesn’t need fixing. The culture around it does. The silence, the shaming, the soft-focus Instagram filters on medical trauma. What we need isn’t a new slogan. We need full-spectrum care. Real support. The freedom to say, “That nearly killed me,” without someone clapping back with a inspirational quote about strength.

Birth didn’t break women.

But pretending it was beautiful nearly did.