After traumatic birth heard friend talking flippantly about it AIBU?

[zabba]

Hi,

I just had an unplanned home birth as I wasn't able to make it to the hospital in time - my 2nd bb, a difficult experience. The baby was back to back, and almost got stuck - we had two paramedics and two midwifes, no pain relief...Needless to say I was in a lot of pain and very frightened, thinking that I might need a C-section or other intervention and having no way to get to the hospital in time.

I managed to give birth naturally (finally) but it was a grim and degrading experience, which has left me feeling incredibly traumatised. I am trying to focus on the baby who is lovely and so far have been fine.

Yesterday I met up with a male friend and overheard him describing it to another friend as 'a scene from the exorcist'. He wasn't there of course, but has spoken to my partner, who told him our room had been like a scene from a crimean war hospital - and he has obviously extrapolated...

AIBU to feel gutted to hear an experience that I can barely bring myself to face, being talked about so flippantly? I realise that it is day five and maybe I am about to hit the baby blues, but not sure how to handle this?

YANBU.

I remember finding it humiliating and embarrassing when DH would tell people of me "screaming" in labour and would try and turn it into an amusing story. And I did not have as traumatic a birth as yours but still found it difficult to deal with and not the beautiful experience I had imagined. In hindsight I realised that DH was just trying to deal with his feelings of anxiety and shock with humour. But i found it insensitive and irritating.
I second what a couple of other posters have said, that it can be very difficult to imagine just how intense and overwhelming an experience labour is if you have never been through it - I know that I really had no idea what it was going to be like! And yours sounded like a terrifying painful experience. I agree that counselling may help. I was never offered any due to having a 'normal' delivery although it was a home birth that went a little wrong and it became necessary to transfer me to hospital. But i think it may have been helpful because I found thinking about the birth quite difficult and was sad that it was not the birth I had wanted or imagined. And then would feel incredibly guilty as I had a healthy baby. And it took me a while to work through these feelings. I believe that some emotional support would be helpful for you. Sending you lots of hugs too.