Is the first birth inherently traumatic?

[Sagres]

I have wondered this myself. From my point of view I wouldn't describe my first birth as traumatic, but it certainly was a huge experience that left me rattled! I think that is the key thing there for me, traumatic says it is specifically negative, but being a bit rattled isn't necessarily negative, it just means it was momentous, a significant event unlike anything you have ever experienced before - and brings with it challenges you have never faced before. I think that if you have similar scenarios and outcomes for subsequent births, you will feel less 'rattled' after them because it is no longer something you haven't experienced before and the challenges are no longer something you haven't faced before. So I wouldn't say it is inherently traumatic, but I think it is inherently more challenging, and you are inherently less able to meet that challenge head on first time you do it. So I think maybe that makes the odds of it being traumatic a bit higher for your first time??
But ultimately it is a challenge and different people will handle different challenges differently at different times in their lives and with different experiences under their belts. So what one person finds as traumatic for their first time is what another feels is a geat birth.

My mum says something about first children - you can only have one first child. Even though you of course love all your children, you can only go through parenting the first time once, you can't unlearn all you learnt from the first one in preparation of the second! I think birth is the same, you go in having never experienced it and although you may know how it goes in theory you don't know how it will go for you and how you work within that experience. Once you've done it once you can't go back and unexperience it so any subsequent experiences are going to become easier (assuming the births play out in a similar fashion), if only for the fact that is now something you have done before and you have some experience in. You learn from your first time and you do things you know work the second time, but you can never go back and do it through those same fresh eyes again!