Introduction:
In the 21st century, research evidence justifies that maternity health professionals, particularly midwives may experience a birth as traumatic. Childbirth in Cyprus is highly medicalized and midwives as advocates of normal birth, face enormous difficulties to fulfil their professional role. Therefore, it is interesting to find more about midwives’ experience providing perinatal care in Cyprus.

Aim:
To explore midwives’ experiences of traumatic childbirth in Cyprus and how this affects their personal and professional life.

Material and Methods:
Qualitative design based on Husserl phenomenological approach. Following ethical approval data were collected through semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of midwives (N=14) from September until December 2021. Data were analysed using Colaizzi's method.

Results:
Data revealed three themes and interesting subthemes: 1) The nature of Traumatic Events, 2) Consequences of Traumatic experience and 3) Dealing with traumatic events. Some midwives become defensive and careful,in order to avoid a similar traumatic experience in the future,while some of the midwives develop symptoms of PTSD.

Conclusions:
Midwives in Cyprus experience many traumatic events during childbirth and that negatively affect their professional and personal life. Collegiality is important to survive from traumatic events and there is an urgent need for effective methods to increase resilience amongst midwives. More awareness must be created during basic and continuing education about decision‑making power, and problem‑solving.