AIBU to feel cheated & robbed of natural birth

[sltorres9]

Hi all, I'm not going to go into too much detail but I gave birth in June '14, I didn't want much medical intervention but ended up with 2 epidurals, 2 diamorphine injections & a spinal block. Then I hemorraged (sp) had a blood clot, and was told I'd have to have a c section for any future babies.
But now the last two nights I've been sitting here sobbing my heart out. I'm gutted that my labour wasn't easy, that my partner wasn't able to cut the cord and he never will be able to. The section terrifies me, to the point where I actually don't want another baby. My labour has ruined it for me, aibu?

I think there is a lot to be said about how intervention/ epidurals are generally mentioned which partly explains why people like the op get the (mistaken) idea they've failed.

We all hear about how you are more likely to have intervention in a hospital than at a home birth, more likely after an epidural etc. Which yes, statistically it's true. What isn't shown in any statistics though is the fact we wouldn't all have straight forward home births without pain relief no matter what. I really don't think a midwife in hospital or anaesthetist is busy looking for labours to intervene with when it isn't necessary. People like me who got lucky and had no pain relief and no intervention contribute to those statistics. The stats don't mention that having a labour that lasts as long as a film, from mild ache first stage to holding your baby makes it pretty easy to do without pain relief. Or that with a labour that short and relatively low pain, you have plenty of energy for a few minutes of pushing at the end. Yes keeping fit and healthy through pregnancy helps, but again much easier when you have a very easy pregnancy.
I see all that as amazing luck, not because of my superior birthing ability or superior choice making. Stats alone make it look like something I had influence in and I didn't imho.

I didn't tell her it wasn't.

I answered earlier in the thread saying that actually how you feel about your birth may have very little to do with how complicated or otherwise the birth was, that it's all a matter of individual perception and that you shouldn't have to justify your feelings - they are what they are.

The point I was trying to make just now was a more general response to some of the other more general comments on this thread.

Planned c-sections are not the only or even the main answer to birth trauma, and birth trauma isn't caused only by complicated vaginal births.

That's all.

I agree that often how people feel about their birth experience is not so much coloured by what happened, but by how well they looked after/whether they feel that they were part of the decision making process and whether they felt they regained some measure of control.
V complicated and 'on paper' horrible labours and deliveries end up making good memories, and 'straightforward' appearing births can cause deep psychological scars.

The OP had a bad experience and it is still affecting her now - that's what this thread is about, not how we feel about our deliveries or whether she did anything 'wrong'.

Hi OP, I just wanted to say I have been there too though a while ago (see my temp name). Nothing like as traumatic, but also bitter disappointment in missing the "full natural experience", fear that i had damaged my relationship with my ds, the lot.

In fact I wrote an article about it afterwards, and was able to interview two close friends who had also geared themselves up for a full-on orgasmic natural birth experience. I still feel quite cross - NOT about the birth interventions, which saved a lot of lives mine and ds' included, but the whole romantic hoo-ha that we'd all fallen for - and, crucially, taken personal responibility for in that modern, individualistic way - when of course none of us has the power which is essential if you are going to take responsibility. We ca't control any individual birth, even our own (well our dcs but yswim). We can only act collectively in this. Our responsibility is to speak out and that is what you are doing - speak out so other women can be more emotionally prepared for physically traumatic births, and those births are handled better so they don't end up emotionally traumatic too.

After I wrote my article I had a very nice and thoughtful letter from no less than Sheila Kitzinger herself. I can't remember the exact words but I felt I had given her pause for thought. Not about the fact that obstetrics should put women at the heart of the process, but about the way her message was leaving women like me and my friend s feeling when nature had other plans. As pp have said, dying in childbirth is, sadly, extremely natural.

I wonder whether it was after that that she wrote her book on birth trauma?

OP YOU HAVE NOT FAILED. Thats like berating a river for failing to flow uphill. However, your other responsibility, as well as speaking out, is to seek rl help as your thoughts are the trauma speaking and the right support can I hope get you to a much bettrr place, as it has previous posters.

For me, writing the article was a part of the help I needed, that and the wonderful relationship I had with my adorable ds then, and still do 18 years on! But I don't think I was as hard hit as you clearly are, so please do get help.

OP, I lapped up all that rose tinted natural birth rhetoric before I got pregnant and when I was expecting my first child. I had a natural, textbook waterbirth... and yet I found the whole experience horrific and utterly traumatising. I also suffered a third degree tear. That, plus some shocking postnatal care, left me anxious and depressed for a very long time.

Second time around I had an ELCS. It was like night vs. day. I finally understood what it felt like to have a baby and feel joyous about it.

I know you can't help how you feel, but natural birth is so overrated.

mini I absolutely feel that you are right both that a a natural birth even with quite drastic complications can be positive and empowering, and to put that point on this thread.

I completely disagree that it is enough that some woman find the experience empowering to risk the years and years of physical and mental agony it produces in the rest.

If we could effectively screen people in advance and select out those that were either destined to have traumatic births or more importantly to be traumatised by whatever birth they experience then I could imagine leaving people to have low risk (both physical and mental) vaginal births...

But yeah - while I am glad you found the experience positive I struggle to imagine that's worth the lost last 5 years of my life (maybe I'm just being selfish)

Birth options just don't allow for different perceptions, which does suck.
I would have preferred 72 hours of agony if it resulted in a healthy baby and me being home and back up and about 24hrs later, over the calmest elcs. Because after babys health it was vital for me I was independent and home asap after birth. Others would quite obviously feel very differently, because there isn't a 'correct' way to feel and while 'I don't want surgery' is met by maternity services, 'I want the predictable experience of an elcs' is often not met.
I wouldn't impose my preference in sandwich filling on all and sundry, so it does baffle me that my preference for giving birth, a somewhat more important decision, is imposed on people who have a different perception.

Childbirth, its choices and options are Feminist issues.

YABU. A hundred years ago you would have died. You are alive with your baby. Excellent result, no?

That's v harsh Swallow. Of course survival is the most important thing but that doesn't make trauma any less upsetting.

lurked but you don't get to chose 72 hour horror and up and around in 24 hours just by not taking the Elective option!?!

I got 48 hour horror and not up and around for 5 days...stuck in hospital with little support by not choosing an Elective C-section.

I think the point is that with the Elective section you mostly get what it says on the tin. By not choosing it you can get anything at all....from nice easy back at work the next day to never recovering.

I disagree with swallow, surviving the birth isn't the biggest issue. After all PND can be fatal to both mother and baby.

Suicide is still the biggest killer of women in younger age brackets.

Trauma is unpleasant but we need to keep a perspective. It is only in recent bullshit hypnoborthing years that we have been sold the lie that a pleasant, trauma-free birth is at all of our fingertips.

Difficult labours/intervention/painful recovery/ripped vaginas/PND: these things have been endured throughout history and will be forever more.

With that take on it swallow we could also dismiss the worries of anybody with a child who has sn/ health problems etc with 'well yeah, a hundred years ago they'd be the village idiot, dead, crippled etc so stop worrying'.
Ffs I know people who have had prem babies that were never in any danger, and when they were upset they didn't have the usual post birth experience of taking baby home straight after, I can't say it crossed my mind to comfort them with the line that 100years ago a few weeks in an incubator wasn't an option.
As to that, not too many years ago my dd would have been a social outcast if I'd left her dad, or I would have been dead if I stayed. I'll stick with a culture that allows is to be upset about more than life and death thanks.

I totally understand how you feel OP

I've had two children. One premature that ended up in an EMCS and the other I had a placental abruption and I ended up with another EMCS.

It wasn't ideal. I had a lot of ideals in my head. My children are 5 and 2 now so I'm at peace with what happened but it does take time. I am still sad I've never had a proper labour and I'm still sad I've never pushed a baby out.

I did my best though, and so did you

ice sorry if I wasn't clear. I'm in no way dismissing either other peoples preferences or implying a bit of will power gets the birth you want. Anything but.

I mean my preference, eg even if it means 72hrs of agony I'd rather give it a shot first is provided for by maternity services. You or anyone else saying they would prefer the elcs straight off doesn't get that preference honoured.
Yy I agree after a none intervention vb, elcs is the safest way. And because you can't depend on the former, I agree there is a lot of sense in people choosing the latter. My massive desire to avoid surgery was because of my circumstances and the realistic worry I couldn't afford to be recovering from it post birth. Certainly not from some earth mother idea vb is a superior choice or a personal need to prove anything. Just fear of recovery

To be honest, the fact that I and my son would have died 100 years ago made me feel more traumatised, not less.

lurked I am sorry if I cam across judgemental - I get what you are saying entirely. I am only trying to point out the difference between choosing an option that has a relatively narrow range of outcomes as opposed to choosing one that has a massive range of outcomes. I think in the future people will be funnelled into Elective C-section because it reduces the risks of terrible outcomes for women. It does indeed also reduce the possibility of walking out like nothing happened...but I think that is a price worth paying on average - especially as giving vaginal birth a go first, far from guarantees you will be mobile quickly afterwards.

I guess it is a classic gamble!

swallowing I complete disagree with you. Why on earth should women accept by default that they may experience Difficult labours/intervention/painful recovery/ripped vaginas/PND as a result of the decision to have children in the future?

There is no need for any of this given our current technological advancement.

Agreed ice. And at present it's often not the woman whose gamble it is who gets to choose. Unless there is compelling medical evidence then we should all get our opinion honoured up to the point it's at all possible.

An interesting read.

I can't relate to how you are feeling Op ....as I mentioned earlier, Surgical intervention all the way for me.

I had a friend who suffered terribly with similar worries. She had some counselling and in her case it seemed to be a really positive move.

I think you had a very tough time and you are maybe projecting your distress about that onto the fact that you had a section. ELCS can be a wonderful experience, mine was. The cord doesn't matter imo. Nonetheless you feel how you feel. It does sound as though you should talk to somebody, perhaps counselling, so that you can come to terms with what happened.

Just to add during my elcs partner was asked if he wanted to cut the cord. It wasn't something either of us had particularly thought about but the option was there.

Just saying as you mentioned it in your Op.

OP... I know there are some posters here offering support, but there are also some that really aren't helping at all. They obviously don't understand. YANBU to feel the way you feel - you will be better off on Birth Trauma Association if you feel you need to talk about it. You can have a debrief arranged with your hospital. Both of those can help. It sounds like you need to know why what happened happened so you know that there wasn't anything you could have done.

A lot of my trauma came from non existent communication and feeling like I was treated like livestock as nothing was explained about what they had done, and were doing, to me or why. If there had been an explanation for the things they did, I would have got over it so much sooner. I could only do that after I had a debrief years later. I felt attacked before then.

The unhelpful posters here are actually irking me.

Oh God, I've been over whelmed at some of your comments! I've never had anyone tell me that I done well or did my best etc so thank you to those who said that. I have arranged a debrief, the sister midwife is going to speak to the consultant who delivered my baby and get an appointment. I never had a section, I had a forceps delivery but I was told because of how badly my labour had gone that I'd have to have a section next time
Truly this has been eye opening and has made me start to realise that my labour going so wrong is not my fault.
I think I have PND too but I've never been diagnosed for it. It also doesn't help (sorry don't mean to drip feed) that my mum hated that I was ever pregnant and after my awful Labour she said 'Don't you, you shouldn't have done it' I had also begged for a c section because I had hypermesis (again naive little girl) and I just wanted him out asap but I was laughed at and told to 'give the induction a go, your body is made for giving birth, you don't need a section'