Traumatic childbirth is subjective and what someone perceives as a ‘birth trauma’ may be seen by others as routine practice. For some women and birthing people, complications or an unexpected, assisted delivery may bring up fear for themselves or their baby, and cause them to experience their birth as traumatic. For others it might not. And for some, it may be the birth environment itself and the interactions they have with the people around them that evokes feelings of powerlessness and triggers their trauma. But for every parent, it is the individual and subjective interpretation of what happens during their birth that determines whether or not they experience birth trauma. In that sense, we can think of birth trauma as being ‘in the eye of the beholder’.