Meghan Trainor opened up about the symptom she had that led to her post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnosis after welcoming her and husband Daryl Sabara’s child, Riley.
The 29-year-old singer reflected on welcoming her now two-year-old via caesarean section during Monday’s episode ofToday. While on to discuss the release of her new book, Dear Future Mama, Trainor said that even after she had her child and returned from the hospital, there were times that she felt like she was still in the delivery room.
“I was like, ‘It’s so weird,’ to my therapist and my doctors,” she explained. “I was like, ‘It’s like I’m back in my room.’ At nighttime, when the pain would kick in. I was like, ‘Daryl, I’m still on the table, I know she’s inside me.’”
Trainor said that the feeling, which went on for “months,” ultimately led to her diagnosis.
“They were like, ‘So we have to work through this. That’s a sign of PTSD,’” she recalled. “And I was like, ‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’”
PTSD is “a mental health condition that’s triggered by a terrifying event through either experiencing it or witnessing”, as noted by the Mayo Clinic. According to the Postpartum Support International, approximately “9 per cent of women” experience PTSD after childbirth. The condition can be caused by traumatic experiences that occur in the delivery room, including an unplanned caesarean section.
The Postpartum Support International notes that symptoms of postpartum PTSD can include flashbacks or nightmares, anxiety or panic attacks, and an “intrusive re-experiencing of a past traumatic event”. However, the condition is “temporary and treatable with professional help”.
Trainor confessed to Today host Hoda Kotb that she gained a better understanding of postrum PTSD after she was diagnosed.
“Once I talked about it and realised like, ‘Oh that wasn’t awesome,’” she continued. “It helped break it down.”
Trainor first revealed that she was diagnosed with PTSD after childbirth during an interview with People earlier this week. She recalled her birth experience and the feelings that came along with it.
“Usually when you’re being sewn up for 45 minutes, you’re like, ‘Look at my gorgeous baby. We did it. This is everything.’ But I was laying there alone,” the “Made You Look” singer explained. “In the moment, I was so drugged up, I was calling my mom, and she’s crying on the phone, like, ‘Are you okay?’ And I was like, ‘We’re fine.’”
The Grammy-Award winner said that once she brought her baby home, her symptoms of PTSD continued to develop and she had nightmares about her caesarean section.
“I couldn’t go to sleep at night. I would be in tears and tell Daryl, ‘I’m still on that table, dude. I’m trapped there. I can’t remind myself I’m in bed and I’m safe at home,” she said. “I had to learn how traumatic it was.”
Trainor explained that through the help of a therapist, she was able to “work through” her PTSD. She also shared some of the insight she gleaned from the medical professional.
“So, you know how you cry every night when you go to bed and you feel the pain, even though there’s no pain left, and it comes back to you?” Trainor said, when citing her therapist’s remarks. “It’s chemical reactions in your brain. Something’s off, and we have to open that up and heal that wound.”
Elsewhere in her interview on Today, the “Mother” singer doubled down about the fear she felt during her first experience with childbirth.
“When they were like, ‘C-section,’ because baby Riley was breach, I was like, ‘Oh, do I have to be awake?’ It was the scariest,” she said. “I felt like I was jumping out of a plane. The whole time, I was just with my husband shaking. I was just like, surrender…Truly, you lose control, and it’s all right. We’ll get through this. And we did. We survived.”
Trainor is currently expecting her second child with Sabara. She first announced her pregnancy in January 2023.
