To still feel pissed off

[deliakate]

that during my Ds's birth, my first child, I had a gas canister given to me for for pain relief, but found out when I was taken into hdu that it had not been on!

I was induced and finally got put into a delivery suite and given the mouthpiece. I was there for a good 8 hours, but I had awful pre eclampsia so was made to have an epidural. My bp kept rising and I had a magnesium sulphate infusion too. Although it was all pear shaped, I think the gas would have helped me to cope and allayed the panic I was feeling, perhaps helping me to connect to the feelings my body was giving me.

With my second, the gas was on from the start and I just seemed to cope with the pain, albeit taking a lot of bollocks throughout.

I have two healthy children, so what is there to worry about. But I'm still pissed. Aibu?

It must be hard to get over these feelings, is there any scope for a debrief type session? Not sure about these things but I'm sure there should be channels for women to talk about their births and how they were handled. It is, at best, a major procedure (not even sure that's the right phrase) and it seems crazy women are just expected to accept what goes on.

I only realized how traumatic giving birth to DS1 was after DS" was born. there's 2 years between them and I was really surprised to find myself still having bad feelings/regret/resentment about 1st time round!

it was actually the worst one of all, what with the delayed epidural, fear of might needing a ECS, then massive episiotomy and forceps delivery, significant blood loss and "bruised" urethra.
I actually remember feeling resentful towards poor DS1 for putting me through that (huh?!) - - that feeling lingered on for about a month. testing times.

so no, YANBU

I'm pretty sure you can access your records through the hospital, it might help you to re-read what actually went down!
MW offered this to me, that's how I know. My main problem was that there were gaps in my memory/perspective so reading the notes really helped me "forgive and forget".

bear in mind, if you do read through your notes you might just get more agitated, so I'm not recommending this as such, just saying you possible have an option.

I'm sorry you had a bad time, it is something that can make recovery time just that much harder emotionally at least (months? years?

If you feel you need professional help, talk to your gp, I'm sure they can offer you counselling (you may have PTSD)

I hope this is helpful

I think YABU.

"perhaps helping me to connect to the feelings my body was giving me"

Gas and air certainly doesn't do that!

I have to say, if things were going wrong, having you off your face on gas and air wouldn't have really helped the situation.

Yabu, as you said you have two healthy children.
I did two births on gas & air-trust me when I say it really doesn't do that much for the pain or coping-think it's more to do with biting down on the mouthpiece if I'm being honest.

Honestly, gas and air really didn't do anything for me - I got through 4 cannisters of it before being taken up to a unit where it's piped through the walls and I definitely didn't feel as though it did much beyond giving me something to do when I was having contractions.

If your maternity unit have a service to discuss your birth, that might help, but it's probably worth considering that you might be focussing on one small element of the process that may not have had as much impact as you have imbued it with retrospectively.

I don't think you're being unreasonable but its time to let it go. My first DC delivery was done by a very incompetent midwife who almost had me bleed to death because she didn't clamp the cord and it shot back inside me and I started to bleed out. She was useless but fortunately there was a doctor in the corridor who came running in and saved the day (and my life).
About a year later i saw her floating about outside a shop I was standing in. I froze and really felt a surge of anger, like I'd want to go outside and give her a piece of my mind and possibly my fist. But I didn't and it doesn't matter now. I'm fine, the baby (now 6) is fine.